The Borrowers was everywhere this Christmas, bemusing as the last I heard of it was when I read the books and watched the BBC series as a child. Daisy says it's because people our age who enjoyed the old BBC series have grown up and had children of their own and want them to enjoy The Borrowers too. Surely some mistake as I am FAR TOO YOUNG for anything I liked as a child to have come full circle. *Resolutely ignores 1980s revival*.
I liked the new adaptation on the TV this Christmas, but for me there was a lot more magic to be found in this theatre production. For one thing, they kept the story set in the 1950s which made it much more nostalgic, and for another it was live theatre which is always that bit more magical than the TV.
I wanted to see The Borrowers because it struck me as a great challenge to produce on stage, what with half the characters being a few inches tall. This production tackled this brilliantly, with tiny puppets and oversized props. One of the most magical moments came as we saw on one size of the stage the fully sized human boy passing dolls furniture into a small hole in the floorboards which simultaneously in another area of the stage Pod, Arietty and Homily received from above fully sized versions and arranged them in their home.
Other favourite moments included the wasp who appeared much larger than the Borrowers and darted around the stage in a very waspish manner by wearing those bouncy leg stilt things like paralympic runners wear (no-one in my office can agree on what these are called). Lunging at them with a large curly sting he held in one hand he was both fearsome and comical, the ideal children's theatre monster.
I also loved the giant boot the borrowers hid inside, the set really was incredibly impressive.
There were a couple of oddities about this production, one being that the gardener, played by an excellently hammy older actor, was constantly referred to as a young boy by the other characters. We were not sure whether this was a combination of creative casting and lazy script editing or a joke that none of the audience seemed to get.
The other strange thing was the half songs the characters occasionally started but didn't finish. When Arietty started singing at the beginning I thought 'great, it's a musical' but then after a few lines she stopped and continued acting as if the song hadn't happened. This happened a couple of times and left me a bit bemused.
Despite these occasional moments of strangeness this was a triumph of clever stage craft and a charming and Christmassy family show. I hope other companies are brave enough to take on The Borrowers for future Christmas productions.
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