The Ideal Gnome Expedition. To 28 December.

Wellingborough

THE IDEAL GNOME EXPEDITION
by David Wood

The Castle To 28 December 2002
10am 16-19 December
2pm 14-19,21-24,26-28 December
7pm 14,20-23,27-28 December
BSL Signed 21 December 2pm
(16-19 December schools performances)
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS 01933 270007
Review Timothy Ramsden 12 December

Innocent fun with holidaying garden furniture.This play's been around some time and – like a re-run of once-favourite children's TV - has a certain cuteness. Compared with today's best Christmas shows, delving into folk and fairy tales it's undoubtedly lightweight and middle-of-the-road. Yet, compared with once all-consuming pantomime, it has a clarity of story and character, mixed in with participatory songs and questions.

With their fishing-road and wheelbarrow, garden gnomes Fisher and Wheeler have adorned 'the big one's' garden for years. While humans weekend away (actually in warmer times than Christmas) the pair venture forth on their own vacation, with a cast-out toy duck whose clockwork mechanism they repair.

They meet stray cat Chips, whose streetwise knowledge helps them survive urban dangers, including fearsome Adventure Playground guardian Securidog and the terrors of a roadworks site – sticky tar and the surface-flattening Wacker machine.

And their island in the sun is as mid-road as you can get: a traffic island. It has to do until the holiday ends, and Chips is repaid by finding a new home.

Humans are kept aside as huge shadows and amplified voices. So, it's very much a small creatures' world: like a young child looking at adult society, turning the kind of messy location adults ignore into imaginative adventure locations (it's the human child who objects to her favourite toy Duck being discarded).

Situations and songs alike are simple and clear. David Bown's production is slowed at times by the fully-dropped curtain for scene changes but is generally brisk and reliably acted. Key moments in building the idea of trust and danger might have more pointing: should the Gnomes take fearsome Securidog's word he'll help them, and unleash him? As Wacker pounds the tar – he's a machine programmed to do that – how should they respond to a being with such a violent 'nature'?

There are moments too when a scene's subsidiary characters might be more animated. And no cat I know would spend so much of life carrying its tail in its paw as poor Chips.

But, mostly, the action rolls on happily, amid Sue Lawson-Dick's over-size scenery, as large as child's-view life if scrubbed more than everyday clean.

Mr Fisher: Tom Cocklin
Mr Wheeler: Christian Rennie
Baby Duck: Elise Davison
Chips: Faith Stevenson
Securidog/Wacker: Chris Clarkson

Director: David Bown
Designer: Sue Lawson-Dick
Lighting: Lesley Gash
Sound: Heath Garrioch
Musical Director: Tim Cumper
Costume: Victoria Elabor

2002-12-17 01:15:30