REVIEW: ROOM ON THE BROOM, LYRIC THEATRE
Bewitching Musical Adaptation of Donaldson’s Hit Book Flies off the Page
We leap onto our broom to head to the launch of this energetic, wonderfully daft and polished musical by Tall Stories, the children’s theatre alchemists behind The Smeds and the Smoos and The Elmer Adventure.
It’s a lively and colourful 60-minute adaptation of the children’s classic, which bewitches our four and six-year-olds with catchy songs, beautiful stage and lighting and a charismatic cast.
It opens with a group of hikers setting up camp beneath the full moon, when they spot a cackling witch flying overhead, leading into the retelling of the story, and cleverly using many of the props from the camp scene - like the red sleeping suit for the dragon finale.
We meet the fabulous witch - who is played by Amy Harris with a brilliantly eccentric, jolly hockey sticks style, reminiscent of a young Jennifer Saunders.
And we follow the witch and her cat - presented as a sassy but loving familiar by Nadia Shash - as they fly through the skies, losing hats, bows and wands, but collecting a broom-full of friends along the way.
These new chums include a wonderful puppet frog, with endless legs who leaps about the stage; a suitably daft and rambunctious dog and Joe Lindley’s hilarious green bird, who is somewhere between Dot Cotton and Bimini Bon Boulash.
There are some lovely physical and staging effects - like the broom snapping in two, and the witch’s friends working together to become a bog monster to scare away the dragon.
Young audience members love joining in the songs and shouting out spells and rhymes they all know and love from the book.
The production’s deliberate misunderstanding of familiar elements of the book draws helium giggles from the tiny crowd, like replacing the pine cone with a traffic cone in the cauldron scene.
Our daughter is thrilled when the dragon picks her out as being so delicious, he will eat her without fries or seasoning, before the witch steps in to save her.
And the big, Iggety ziggety zaggety zoom reveal of the truly magnificent broom is forensically faithful to the book, with seats for the witch and the cat and the dog, a nest for the bird and a shower for the frog.
It closes with the ensemble of four returning to the camping scene, when a bag of the witch’s Jelly Babies drops from the sky, and we see a charming, shadow puppet scene of the motley crew flying past the full moon on their roomy new broom.
This production has been a kid’s theatre staple since 2008 and will clearly continue to bewitch theatre goers for many more years.
Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 7ES. 22 November - 5 January. Tickets from £12
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