By Katrina ffiske
Salisbury Playhouse, is one of only 20% of theatres in the country reopened this Christmas and I was lucky enough to get tickets to see the current Christmas musical, Little Robin Redbreast, an original Salisbury-based production by Glyn Kerslake and Gareth Machin (The Night Before Christmas and The Tailor of Gloucester) for young children and their families.
The playhouse was buzzing, groups of children over-excited to be going to the theatre, and owing to past months, the adults were equally as excited.
The set, designed by Toots Butcher, is stylish in its simplicity, wooden panels at the back have intriguing closed shutter-like windows. Enticing wooden boxes with lids on stage, a piano set discreetly at the back and wooden trees framing the stage, twinkling with white lights.
The production focusses on little Robin who’s excitedly awaiting Christmas. To help him count down the days, Mummy and Daddy have given him an advent calendar. Behind every window is a picture and every picture tells a story. Robin links the pictures together as he makes his magical, musical journey towards Christmas Day, encountering a street-wise squirrel, an attention-seeking mouse, a family of reindeer and a curious cat along the way.
It was an enthralling afternoon of flashing lights . Ryan Heenan, who was at the RSC just before lockdown in Robbie Williams’s adaptation of David Walliams’ The Boy in the Dress, charmed the audience as he played the disgruntled son, his parents and sister too busy to give him attention. On opening his first window of the advent calendar, he is taken into the world of a lost robin attempting to get home in time for Christmas. Each time the audience is invited to clap, a window slides at the back and a new picture is revealed taking Robin into a magical journey home. Ryan has the children entranced as he elegantly flies across the stage, jumping from box to box, engaging the children with questions, endearing us as he learns to fly and battles to get home.
Bernadette Bangura, who sparkled as the Sheriff’s Spanish housekeeper in the pantomime, Robin Hood, plays a warm-hearted but distracted mother and among other characters, she is deviously entertaining as a cruel and fur-coated cat.
Dan Smith (Little Robin Redbreast, 2017; Moonfleet and Worst Wedding Ever, Salisbury Playhouse), plays the work-at-home, piano-playing, timid father. Dan expertly juggles playing the piano live on stage, and is one of the highlights of the show as the rapping, greedy, squirrel.
Philippa Hogg (Little Robin Redbreast, 2017), entertains the children as naughty sister Molly. She shines out in a toe-tapping musical score as the star seeking mouse, encouraging Robin to tap dance across the stage with her, choreographed by Joanne Redman.
The show is full of surprises: reindeer decorating their stall for Christmas, snow balls appearing from nowhere, and with no pantomime this year, the writers have made sure there is enough audience participation to keep children and adults enthralled. Gareth Machin’s direction manages to make a large stage seem cosy and inviting, full of magical moments and fools us all into thinking the actor list is much larger than four.
Little Robin Redbreast was originally set in The Salberg Studio in 2017 and has been re-imagined for the Main Stage. This is the perfect post-lockdown outing to celebrate the festive season. The auditorium is completely Covid-safe, alternate rows of seats have been taken out and make-shift, stylish wooden tables rest on seats, ensuring distance is kept and the audience has somewhere to place drinks and snacks.
Little Robin Redbreast runs until December 27.