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Critic's choice: Top five plays
Evening Standard 22.12.06
Tale of tails: The cast of The Mouse Queen re-work Aesop's fables with puppetry and song
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For festive entertainment check out The Mouse Queen, Rapunzel and Coram Boy while A Family Affair is the ideal antidote to the traditional tonics of Christmas-time theatre.
The Mouse Queen
Hampstead, NW3
A reworking of five of Aesop's fables, The Mouse Queen uses a delightful combination of puppetry, acting and music to tell the story of Tilly Mouses's move to the Big City - where she develops an alarming addiction to cheese. Delicatessens should hire the actor-musicians in Steve Tiplady's tip-top production to stand outside their premises and croon little Tilly Mouse's paean to cheese: it's just one of the original songs in The Mouse Queen that are so hummable, West End composers ought to take note. Don't bother about a small child as a pretext: just go.
(020 7223 2223). Until 6 January. Fiona Mountford.
Rapunzel
Battersea Arts Centre, SW11
It's been an action-packed year for rapidly rising Cornish innovators Kneehigh. After new productions at the Lyric Hammersmith and the RSC, now comes an immensely enjoyable alternative Christmas show in Battersea. Writer Annie Siddons overturns the tower 'n' tresses fairytale in pleasingly robust fashion. The children were enchanted by director Emma Rice's vibrant, intelligent production offering live music, puppetry and in-the-round action.
(020 7223 2223). Until 14 January. FM.
Cinderella
Hackney Empire, E8
Any men who are planning to dress up as women this festive season should hasten Hackney-wards for a masterclass. Michael Kirk and David Ashley as the Ugly Sisters in writer/director Susie McKenna's best-of-the-season panto are a committed, compelling treat from start. They arrive in Technicolor versions of 1920s flying outfits and finish attired as French maids, complete with mini suites of polished furniture on their heads. The rest of the cast, too, throw themselves with utter conviction into this Flapper-era take on rags and riches, and musical director Steven Edis and choreographer Carl Parris whip up a song and dance storm.
(020 8985 2424). Until 13 January. FM.
Coram Boy
National's Olivier, SE1
Fairy tale beneficence mixed with Dickensian villains, ending with Christmas Carol-type uplift: the National certainly knows how to spot a festive family hit. Returning after a sell-out run last year, Helen Edmundson's adaptation of the Whitbread Award-winning children's book by Jamila Gavin is, largely, a Christmas cracker. There's all sorts going on: child trafficking, the slave trade, Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital and the music of Handel, for starters. But scratch the surface and a universally resonating theme of families fractured and reunited, and love lost and found is revealed. Take a thoughtful older child, a fond grandparent and a large hanky.
(020 7452 3000). Until 22 February. FM.
A Family Affair
Arcola, E8
Here is an ideal antidote to the traditional tonics of Christmas-time theatre. Alexander Ostrovsky's satirical comedy of loose morals and lost manners makes a terrific impression in the stylish but strictly controlled exuberance of Serdar Bilis's spiffing production. In 1849, Russian censors banned Ostrovsky's exposÈ of a mercantile society in which the family that stays together ends up avariciously preying upon each other. Quite right too. Nick Dear's translation flows in eloquent cascades of abuse and insult, as Jonathan Coyne plays the too-clever-byhalf Merchant Samson with appropriately vulgar guile.
(020 7503 1646). Until 13 January. Nicholas de Jongh.
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