GEORGE'S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE. To 8 January.

Bolton

GEORGE'S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE
by Roald Dahl adapted by Stuart Paterson

Octagon Theatre To 8 January 2005
Mon-Sat 10.15am 2.15pm 7.15pm various dates. No performance 25 Dec 1,3 Jan
Runs 1hr 40min One interval

TICKETS: 01204 520661
www.octagonbolton.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 December

Rightly raucous production of play where horror-granny gets her come-uppance and down-sizing.A high-octane Christmas at the Octagon, where a Welsh writer's story, adapted by a Scottish playwright is a winter tonic for young English audiences, with director Lucy Pitman-Wallace playing the action forward on Bolton's thrust-stage, taking the floor of George's farm-house home right up to the front-row seats

There's plenty of pre-show action to establish a sense of busy-ness, but the first act of Stuart Patterson's expert adaptation is virtually a duo for young George and his granny. Nothing George can do, or be, is right for this wizened figure slumped in her corner armchair. In a heightened production style, flame-coloured highlights feature in the hair of the bright, comic-book coloured characters. Not Granny, who's grey throughout, in hair and dress.

Dahl sees the child's view: family life as boredom varied by criticism. Parental roles appear traditional, mother all domestic and nervy (careful only to faint somewhere she doesn't mark her dress), dad all energy and briskness, thinking first of the commercial exploitation of George's improvised prescription. These are parents from a child's perspective always busy and bothered.

Playing is as brightly coloured as Jessica Curtis' child's-drawing house set. Peter Hamilton Dyer brings a no-nonsense manner to dad, business-like and optimistic - rightly playing the farmer more than the father.

Shane Zaza shows both George's vulnerability to Granny's oppressiveness and his natural childhood zest for experiment. He occupies a world where the fascination of getting Granny with a sludge of goo mixes with the imaginative fantasy of a medicine containing shoe polish, engine oil and a cocktail of other substances similarly inimical to human consumption.

The production muffles the impact on Granny, as she grows through the roof there's surely more fun to be had out of the situation than the rather tame hoisting here. But there's more than compensation in the busy attempt to recreate the magic mixture after the interval. Young audience members shout out the missing ingredients for the reconstituted lotion while Dyer's changes from delight to perplexity as each attempt makes his livestock go haywire is a delight. It's a happy Christmas in Bolton this year.

Mother; Jo Cowan
Father: Peter Hamilton Dyer
Grandma: Maureen Purkis
George: Shane Zaza
Chickens: Liam Whittaker

Director: Lucy Pitman-Wallace
Designer: Jessica Curtis
Lighting: Thomas Weir
Sound: Andy Smith
Puppets/Animation Direction: John Barber

2004-12-06 14:20:19