REVIEW: Mr Popper's Penguins, Tunbridge Wells Assembly Rooms (UK Tour) ✭✭✭

Russell Morton as Mr Popper, Toby Manley and Lucy Grattan. Photo: Helen Murray Mr Popper's Penguins

Cadogan Hall (as part of Uk Tour)

Tour Information

There is a moment near the end of this 75-minute show for children, when the stage explodes into life in a magnificently catchy, handsomely melodic Jerry Herman-esque showstopper, which is also the show’s title number, and you are simply awestruck by the terrific charm of the music of Luke Bateman and the lyrics of Richy Hughes, and also of this Pins and Needles Productions adaptation of the Atwater’s 1938 children’s novel of the same name.  Here, the production by Emma Earle, designed by Sophie Squire perfectly presents this showpiece: toes tap, bodies sway, the audience smiles and the many children present jump up and down excitedly.  The showman, who gets to put this number over, is a hugely charismatic and exotic character, immensely appealing to the youthful audience in the way that Willy Wonka or Dewey Finn are.  And then, after the brisk finale, in a tacked-on epilogue, we get a lively, interactive dance, where for the first time in the show, a strong link is established between the cast and audience.

And then you wonder why the rest of the show isn’t like that.  How could such talent, so beautifully brought into focus at the conclusion of the work, so resolutely miss the mark through the bulk of what has gone before?  It is a conundrum.  Yes, there is a dry-run for the ‘big number’ in a highly visual and kinaesthetic set-piece that comes quite late in the story, when the birds take over the Poppers’ drearily suburban home and run riot.  That generates some welcome laughter.  But even the tender-sweet, regretful lullaby sung to the ailing first arrival doesn’t quite touch the emotions in the way it should.  Why?

This show must be doing respectable business.  Having toured the UK and London last year (I saw it at Cadogan Hall, where it attracted a good audience), it has smartly capitalised on the addictive attractions of the black-and-white, fish-eating egg-layers: hordes of tiny tots (the production says it is pitched at three-year-olds and older) flock to see these creatures; many fans come decked out in penguin onesies, or penguin snoods, or penguin facepaint, or clutching toy, stuffed, plastic or cut-out penguins.  And where they go, so also do their dutiful parents, footing the bill.  The market targeting is, therefore, sound.  The show must be doing at least reasonable business, otherwise, it wouldn’t still be touring, let alone going to Broadway and then taking up residence as the early show at the Criterion in the West End for the Christmas season.  It can evidently pay its way within strenuous margins: with a cast of four (Mr Popper is Russell Morton, Mrs Popper is Roxanne Palmer, Lucy Grattan and Toby Manley are the supports), a tiny crew, and music coming from playback tapes, and minimal decor, the running costs are modest.

Russell Morton, Toby Manley, Lucy Grattan, Roxanne Palmer. Photo: Helen Murray

Be that as it may, when I saw it, this time, around, the production looked fairly lost in the great draughty barn of the Tunbridge Wells Assembly Rooms.  The script, not noticeably different from how it was last year, is still mainly ‘tell’ and not ‘show’.  It makes you feel that you are sat at a bedside, reading the text to a child, pointing to illustrations of a housepainter going up a step-ladder or of cavorting Antarctic wildfowl, and wondering whether you will have to get all the way through it before sleep can be induced and you can go and watch something more interesting on the telly.  Sadly, the social attitudes on offer are mostly out-of-date and somewhat tiresome: with the exception of the female explorer seen briefly at the beginning and end, gender and social stereotypes are rigidly enforced; dominating the stage for much of the performance, the image of Stillwater (home to the Poppers) is one of suffocating uniformity.  The Poppers themselves, and especially the husband, are meek, quiet, polite people, who do nothing to attract attention or generate dramatic interest.  There is no villain, no palpable struggle between the forces of good and evil.  There is no drama.

Only with the arrival of the maltreated penguins – shipped across the world in frighteningly non-WWF compliant wooden boxes – does the stage action begin to heat up a bit.  Yet, the decision has been taken to represent them with puppets operated by a troupe of onstage actors.  Yes, this works in ‘Warhorse’ and ‘The Lion King’: those are epics, where we are supposed to believe there are millions of people involved.  A few extra bodies on the stage is not a problem there.  However, in the primly conformist living room of the Poppers, the team of operators is just in the way.  Some time ago, we got a ‘Tintin’ in which Snowy was played by an adult actor, and it worked like a dream: the audience adored him, and he became the centrepiece of that adaptation.  This is a tale which is crying out for the same sort of connection with the audience.  The birds are what the kids have come to see.  The younger children are, the less of a gap they perceive between animals and themselves: were these birds – at least the central couple - played by live actors, that would probably create more of the bond between them that is so conspicuously lacking in most of this show.

Russell Morton, Tony Manley, Lucy Grattan, Roxanne Palmer. Photo: Helen Murray

As things are, it’s a fairly cool affair.  Even the many beauties of the urbane, wittily crafted score go far over the heads of the mainly very young audience and tend to move the story away from rather than closer to them: eg. ‘I’m smitten,/ Frost-bitten,/ We’ll share a mitten/ Or two’ is typical of Hughes’ densely-written, clever lyrics, matched by some tidy 1930s pastiche by Bateman – and they come not as an occasional treat, but by the armful.  That would not be a problem were they given to fascinating characters with the capacity to surprise and charm: by comparison, Harold Arlen’s gorgeous melodies and Yip Harburg’s equally dazzling lyrics in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ are lavished upon Dorothy’s imagination and the bizarre personalities generated by it: they are emphatically never awarded to the dull, grey Auntie Em and Uncle Henry.  Furthermore, the spoken dialogue itself lacks any such distinction and is clearly the work of other – much less gifted – hands.

So, should one see this show?  In my book, even if only for the closing minutes, then most definitely.  Bateman and Hughes are major new talents and this is an indicator that much, much greater things can be expected of them.  All they need now are the right scripts and productions to make that magic happen.

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