REVIEW: The Box of Delights at the RSC *** (three stars)
There is a foolish delusion that most parents fall into at some point when contemplating what lovely toy they should get their cherished young offspring for Christmas.
Mine was a beautifully-made wooden walker with exquisite pastel-coloured alphabet bricks that fitted pristinely into the dinky tray atop its four perfectly carved wheels. I imagined my genius toddler trundling around proudly pushing her new walker come Christmas morning, perhaps pausing for a spot of Wordle or some such precocious word wizardry with her wee bricks.
Alas, reality came crashing in with the arrival of the grandparents and their cargo plane-load of garishly coloured, noisy and plasticky Fisher-Price merch that she bashed about with glee and abandon for hours on end come the big day itself. My walker, full of retro charm as it was, sat forlornly in the corner.
The RSC’s Box of Delights suffers somewhat from wooden walker syndrome.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty on offer that is absolutely charming and it’s not a bad show by any means, it’s just not the Rudolph’s-nose bullseye festive hit all involved were perhaps aiming for.
In the hands of designer Tom Piper, it looks splendid. There is much invention and magic in the stagecraft. A plethora of Narnia-style wardrobes and assorted wooden boxes are deployed as hiding places and sources of wonderment. And video projections are cleverly used to change landscapes, from river to forest, and conjure memories and bring large scale events to the stage. Naturally there are puppets, from a preening phoenix to Barney the adorable mutt.
Visually it’s a feast, but has the eggnog has been over-egged?
The production is, as has been well documented, an adaptation by Piers Torday of John Masefield’s 1935 children’s novel The Box of Delights.
After returning home from boarding school for the Christmas holidays, boy hero Kay Harker (Callum Balmforth) bumps into aged but immortal magician Cole Hawlings (Stephen Boxer). The old man has knowledge about Kay’s destiny and shares some cryptic advice, then later gives him a magical box which he most protect from baddie wizard Abner Brown (Richard Lynch). The box helps Kay time travel, fly and shrink to mouse-size as he rattles off on a series of adventures, not least the mission to save Christmas.
The Harry Potter associations are boundless. Like Potter, Kay is without parents and is accompanied by two pals: spunky tomboy Maria Jones and her brother, the nerdy Peter (Jack Humphrey, raising the biggest laughs).
Director Justin Audibert maintains it is a “story told through the imagination of a child”.
Is it though? Not really. While the actors playing the kids are wonderful, they are adults playing the characters with cartoonish Enid Blyton zeal. They reminded me of when French and Saunders, and Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall, et al, did The Comic Strip Presents back in the 1980s.
In striving for the 1930s nostalgia the show feels at times as though it’s fallen into a parody of class.
There are some scenes that work well, including a welcome dose of comedy as the carolling villagers are kidnapped by the baddie henchmen, aka the wolves. Best of the evil folk is lady gangster Sylvia Daisy Pouncer (job shared by Claire Price and Nia Gwynne) who along with her mob bring a bit of pace and action to proceedings.
Masefield, interestingly enough, was poet laureate in 1932 and opened the Memorial Theatre, after the previous theatre burned down. He read out a somewhat clunky poem (included in the programme) on the night itself. But elsewhere his verse and prose enjoys a Shakespearean sense of invention.
That joy of language translates well into the script at times, which maintains a rich wordiness.
Plot-wise though, I suspect few will keep up with the sometimes muddled condensing of the novel. It perhaps misses the exposition of the book with the storyline coming over as disjointed and hard to follow.
It also wavers between magical adventure and panto, especially when bad wizard Abner is around.
He’s definitely more hammy King Rat villain than darkly evil Voldemort. That lack of any real menace leaves a tension deficit and the pace slows to a dawdle at times.
What The Box of Delights has in spades though is olde time nostalgia for a proper Christmas, and by the end there is a big figgy slab of sentiment and magic – carol singers, snow, and is that Santa?
It would be churlish to favour the cracker toy over this handcrafted artisan gift of a show… But just try telling that to the kids.
The Box of Delights, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, until 7th January
