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| THE ARTS: Imaginations exercised By Clement Crisp Financial Times; Dec 16, 2002 It is a brave, not to say foolhardy, artist who transfers a childhood classic to stage or screen. The great texts - Alice the prime example - can be destroyed, de-natured within the briefest moment, for we all carry our own and very personal images of these treasures. One wrong word, a costume or a face that does not fit into our mental gallery, and the game is blown: "It's nothing like!" the proper condemnation. The Wind in the Willows is no stranger to makeovers, and I know that a swift refresher-course in Kenneth Grahame's text is the only antidote to seeing a Ratty who is not Ratty enough, an un-Toad-like Toad (for all the "Poop Poops" we may hear). William Tuckett, Royal Ballet choreographer, is the latest to undertake this crossing of Niagara on a tight-rope. He doesn't exactly fall in, rather does his adaptation avoid too great a reliance upon the book save as dramatic skeleton. Thus freed, his staging - at the Opera House's Linbury Theatre - has a lot of fun, and almost wins the impossible battle by being admirably cast and imaginatively staged. The ingredients are, in brief, these. A narrator (Graham himself) welcomes us to an attic where memories abound. The text is a sympathetic guide to the action and a contemplation of what the book may mean as the animals' year takes its course, featly made by Andrew Motion (Tuckett believes in the best ingredients) and spoken with a lot of charm by Anthony Dowell. There is a score abstracted from the music of George Butterworth which, apart from the strains of The Banks of Green Willow and a fearfully sprightly jig, is a sound-track, obedient as wall-paper. There is an evocatively musty set by the Brothers Quay, and clever costumes by Nicky Gillibrand (the duck-hats are especial fun), and Tuckett's movement is lively in delineating character. The great strength of the performance is in its cast. Philippa Gordon is Mole, her first appearance from a roll of carpet a brilliant image; Will Kemp is a superb Ratty, brilliantly catching both his bravery and his relaxed way with life; Matthew Hart is Toad, a tremendously resourceful performance - Graham's creation to the life; Adam Cooper is Badger, playing with all his customary subtlety but, and this is my one real argument with the staging, made to look like a Victorian ruffian, even unto the curly bowler and lowering expression. I thought at first he was a weasel come to make trouble. What should be avuncular, reliable, seems sinister. There are also most of the other figures, taken by singers and dancers - the evening is musically well done, with an admirable chamber ensemble - and I much enjoyed Luke Heydon as the gaoler's daughter, wildly provocative. There is snow, carol singers, some frightening weasels and stoats and the right sense that imaginations can be exercised. I am less enchanted by some nanny-ish comments in the programme-notes. Asked "Have you seen a water-rat?", I trust your offspring would reply "Yes, our house is infested with them, they've already eaten the Bechstein", and the description of Graham's characters as "three bachelor animals living the relaxed lives of Edwardian landed gentry" is politically correct tosh. So - take the tots? Yes, especially if they have read the tale. Go yourself? Yes, for the fun of most of it, not least Matthew Hart's delirious Toad, which is a grand display of physical identification. And yes, because otherwise Nutcrackers lurk at every turn, and you need to keep your wits about you as the horrors of urban Yule snap and snarl like weasels at your heels. Clement Crisp Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. Tel: 020 7304 4000. www.royalopera.org. Production sponsored by UBS Warburg |