Father Christmas, his reindeer, and sleigh have landed at The Waterside in Sale.. A Lyric Hammersmith and Pins and Needles Production presented Father Christmas. It has a Christmas residency at the theatre. This children’s piece of theatre can be enjoyed by children and adults alike.
Mildly irritable but lovable Father Christmas gets ready for the busiest day of the year: Christmas Eve. While the rest of us indulge in some relaxation time, Father Christmas has more on his plate than just his Christmas dinner. He has to prepare all the Christmas deliveries, feed his reindeers, and finally fly off into the snowy Christmas Eve night. 'Bloomin’ snow!'. But things are not as icy smooth as you might expect, after all he has to travel all around the world (even into space) to deliver presents - a humongous logistical challenge. Challenges hit him like a snowball in the face, for example: the soot covered chimneys and perilous weather conditions. His cheeky cat and dog lift his Christmas spirit though.
Live music, sound, storytelling, humour, special effects, and life-like puppetry fuse together to create this (thoroughly deserved) critically acclaimed adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ family-treasured book.
Mike Aherne was in the title role and effectively balanced Father Christmas’ grumpiness and pleasantness. He was basically a big cuddly grandpa. His inner joy and elation was present (especially when speaking to his pets) but there was also a subtle sign of loneliness too. An important issue to address as not everyone is with someone at Christmas. As a result, watching his whole adventure felt quietly immense.
Puppeteering the reindeer, pets, and various other characters was Richard Booth. He did a stunning job, creating life-like movements with a gracious fluidity. All of the animals had character. Characters' movements were layered with sweetly funny nuances – they were animated and alive. Music and live sound was provided by Katy Sobey, who has a gentle singing voice. There was this lovely recurring idea of cartoon like sounds in the play, created with her body or a prop. For example: the squeaky cleaning of the window was vocalised, and the popping a wine bottle cork was made using a unique prop. The next minute, a saxophone was employed to play a comedy music motif when Father Christmas walked around his house. Something as mundane as making breakfast was made exciting, thanks to the design by Lucy Rivers.
Director, Emma Earle has done a sterling job at making sure scenes are not too long, the pace was always moving forward and effectively holding children’s attention throughout. Zoe Squire’s set was a gigantic pop-up book showing a snow-covered town; maintaining the original visual aesthetic of Briggs’ illustrations. I loved the Advent Calendar idea, you constantly discovered something new about the set you hadn’t seen before. It was like a playground.
I must mention the front of house team at The Waterside, who wore their Father Christmas labelled T-shirts. Before and after the performance, they went the extra mile to shape the experience of going to watch this show, making it the best it could possibly be. This was evidenced from the smiles on their faces to the decorations to the hanging fairly lights which looked like falling snow. A bloomin’ marvellous effort. Everything about tonight, from the show to the front of house was carefully considered and littered with detail.
There is no such thing as perfection but this show was just about as near as you could get! Father Christmas was full of love, humour, and joy. It summarised what Christmas is all about in an exquisite and magical look into what Father Christmas really gets up to. If you are looking for present ideas: buy tickets for this show.
Reviewer – Sam Lowe
on – 6/12/18
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