Kids

It wasn’t so long ago that children’s theatre, outside of the Polka and the Unicorn, only happened at Christmas and was made up of tatty pantos and adaptations of ‘Postman Pat’ or Roald Dahl, which seemed largely designed to sell vast quantities of merchandise to gullible children. There was even less for older children. How things have changed. Young people’s theatre is now prolific and the National, the Lyric Hammersmith, the Young Vic and BAC are all vying for the children’s vote this year. Feature continues

Remarkably, two of this year’s offerings have Melly Still’s name attached to them. This is the choreographer and designer who only turned to solo directing two years ago. That said, her career as a designer included the Young Vic’s legendary production of ‘Grimm Tales’, directed by her partner Tim Supple, in which she was as much involved in the staging as in how the stories looked. Now her production of ‘Coram Boy’, the surprise hit of last year, returns to the National, while ‘Watership Down’ will come to the Lyric Hammersmith after a short tour.

It was brave of the National Theatre’s artistic director, Nicholas Hytner, to ask Still to direct in the always challenging Olivier Theatre just on the strength of seeing her production of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in Bristol. But it was a gamble that paid off. Still was given a pile of children’s books to read and chose Jamila Gavin’s ‘Coram Boy’, a striking saga set in Gloucestershire and London in the eighteenth century, in which Gavin contrasts the positive virtues of Handel and the Coram Hospital with a graphic world in which children are abandoned, disinherited and even murdered. ‘Theatrical’ is Still’s favourite word, and as she read Gavin’s book she was immediately attracted by its theatrical possibilities and asked Helen Edmundson to adapt it. ‘It was a real Gothic page-turner and I could immediately visualise all those locations on the Olivier stage. And I absolutely loved the idea of weaving “The Messiah”, which is so prominent in the novel, into the action.’

The use of inspirational choral music in contrast to the dastardly deeds on stage was one of the most striking aspects of her production, which turned out to be quite a tear-jerker. Still cast women to play the boys, their soprano voices trained by musical director Derek Barnes to sound boyishly thinner. Boys could have been used, but it was important that the voice of one of the main characters should be close to breaking and there were dangers that it could tip over during the run. ‘I have to be honest,’ she says, ‘that I didn’t really give young adolescent boys a chance, but I wanted this to be an ensemble piece in which all the actors play all the parts, which would have been harder with boys.’

‘Coram Boy’ is unfamiliar to most adults, but ‘Watership Down’, the bestseller written by Richard Adams in 1972, is an early example of a crossover novel. In this case, Rona Munro was given the task of adapting the epic tale of a group of rabbits who are driven out of their old home and set off on a dangerous adventure to find a new one. Adams was apparently influenced by his fellow officers in WWII who can be seen in the characters of Bigwig, Fiver and Hazel, while the ferocious General Woundwort is Hitler.

Women playing boys is one thing, actors playing bunnies is quite another. Still, who has also designed the show, says that she’s not put her actors into rabbit suits or even given them whiskers. So will there be anything rabbit-like about the way they look? ‘No, not really,’ she says. ‘But because they are exposed to the risk of being killed at every second, it’s as if they are in a war zone. So they become very superstitious, nervous and twitchy as humans, which is quite rabbity. Rona draws on that in the writing. They can be having a dialogue about something one moment and then suddenly scarper the next.’ Still also uses scale to create a rabbit world. The carrots are almost as big as their owners and the lettuces the size of gym balls.

When Still was asked to direct ‘Watership Down’, she admits that she did wonder whether she was being put in a box marked ‘children’s theatre’. ‘But I don’t mind as long as I love the story. Then I don’t really think of it as children’s theatre. I don’t sit there and direct it with kiddies in mind. I think of the story and of being able to communicate that story as richly and empathetically as possible to whoever comes to see it.’

‘Watership Down’ previews at the Lyric Hammersmith from Thur. ‘Coram Boy ’ is at the National Theatre Olivier from Wed 29.