'Wow! Said The Owl' review or 'Somewhere over the rainbow...'

'Wow! Said The Owl,' Tim Hopgood
Little Angel Theatre, 12th December 2015
Written for Guardian online 

It’s two-and-a-half-year-old Emelie’s first trip to the theatre and she arrives nervously clutching a mini stuffed owl. By the end of this cracking adaptation of Tim Hopgood’s picture book, she has stuffed the toy into her mouth in a fit of excitement. It’s a joy to watch those early nerves evaporate as Emelie is pulled into this warm and sparky show.

Fiametta Horvat’s set is essentially a blank page: a canopied stage-space washed in white. The star of this one-woman show, Lizzie Wort, is also a vision in white, wrapped up in a feathery coat. As director Joy Haynes’ production progresses, the set is flooded with colour, as the little owl (a fluff-ball puppet) discovers the bright-hued joys of the daytime.

There are countless magical flourishes hidden inside Horvat’s deceptively simple looking set. As the sky turns blue, Wort pulls some dusky blue sheets from the ceiling and hangs them, sweeping, across the stage. Emelie’s mouth drops open. Dominic Sales’ gentle music ripples around the space and Wort taps on scattered glockenspiel pieces, concealed throughout the set. Emelie cannot stop smiling. As the sun rises, Wort dons a bright yellow sombrero, wiggles her hips and lets rip with a stupendously silly song. Emelie laughs so much she begins to squeal.

Wort beams throughout and it could all get a bit saccharine, were it not for a few properly quirky touches. As the day draws on, vegetation flourishes throughout the set and Wort whips off her white coat to reveal a grass-green dress. Little flashes of orange burst through the costume and, in a plummy operatic voice, Wort sings out: “Orange, ORANGE!’ Now we’re all squealing. As the rain begins to fall, she produces a sack-like cloud puppet, who angrily gobbles up the colours on stage. It’s a nutty delight but also a superbly slick scene change.

Sometimes the aesthetics become a little too abstract for their own good. The scene in which a number of animals are fashioned out of a single piece of crepe paper leaves us all a little baffled. But that’s my only complaint about a show with such a subtle magic about it that, as night-time beckons, Emelie is standing on her seat and singing along with the sun.