Stick Man

For those of you who haven’t got round to reading it yet, Stick Man (by Julia Donaldson, with pictures by Axel Scheffler) is a much-loved rhyming storybook recounting the many misadventures of its eponymous hero on his quest to return to ‘the family tree’. Menaced by pets, children, waterfowl and wintry weather, Stick Man’s journey is a bit reminiscent of the traumatic experiences of Andersen’s Little Fir Tree and Steadfast Tin Soldier, but unlike these sentimentally gloomy exemplars, Stick Man boasts a staunchly optimistic certainty of eventual homecoming that is vindicated in the tale’s pleasingly festive finale.

The cast of three, warm but not saccharine, do a fantastically committed job of engaging their young audience (ages 3+). Mark Kane‘s Stick Man is a skinny, slightly geeky, but totally authoritative presence, with a nice line in extremely daft dancing. Playing most of the obstacles in Stick Man’s way, Emily Pollet tackles a welter of quick changes with clarity and vim, and still manages to invest the deserted Stick Lady with a soothing blend of sadness, stoicism and calm. The production also boasts a jaunty, catchy score by Benji Bower, which jogs sympathetically alongside Stick Man on his journey, with Brian Hargreaves (on percussion, saxophone, melodica and much else) pausing periodically to cheerfully channel the book’s narrative voice of warning (‘O Stick Man!’) through a handy megaphone.

Turning a thirty-page picture book into a fifty-minute show means taking things pretty slowly, and a couple of music-and-mime interludes do rather outstay their welcome. But director Sally Cookson makes good use of this enforced pacing, developing some real dramatic tension in the story’s closing stages, as a delightedly complicit audience (with fingers on lips) help prepare the way for Stick Man’s long-awaited family reunion.

If Stick Man lacks anything, it’s a sense of risk-taking and anarchy, of the peculiar, unpredictable liveness of theatrical storytelling. But it would be churlish to cavil at this highly-accomplished children’s show; a confident, charming, polished and thoroughly reliable seasonal entertainment for the very littlest theatre-goers.