If you’ve booked the family into ‘I Believe in Unicorns’ on a whim, thinking it’ll probably be a lovely, all-ages theatre show about unicorns… you wouldn’t be entirely off the mark.
Director Dani Parr and performer Danyah Miller’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s 2005 kids' story is delightful, for the most part.
Surrounded by teetering piles of books, Miller eases us into the show via affable chat with the young audience, discussing some of their favourite books with them, before launching into the story proper.
Using an impressive array of props and projection screens that are niftily concealed in the set – enormous credit to designer Kate Bunce, who adds a whole layer of wonder to proceedings – Miller tells the tale of Tomas, the young boy who saved the library’s books. He struggles at school, but his life is changed via the discovery of the wonders of the building and its inspirational librarian: dubbed the Unicorn Lady for her striking figurine of the mythical beast.
For the longest time, ‘I Believe in Unicorns’ feels like a cuddly, slightly cheesy tribute to the power of libraries, that’s elevated by inventive staging and Miller’s spectacularly likeable performance.
It’s a bit of a shock to the system, then, when the village is suddenly overtaken by a destructive war. It’s a fascinating and jarring moment: I’m not familiar with the original book, and there isn’t a lot of information about it readily available online. But on stage the abrupt descent into conflict feels somewhat lacking in a context that might make it a bit more impactful. Written in the first half of the ’00s, I’m guessing Morpurgo was thinking of the Balkans conflict, but Miller’s use of contemporary reference points when chatting with the audience offers little sense of a different time and place. Maybe that’s the point – war can happen to any of us – but ultimately this isn’t ‘Blasted’ - the eruption of conflict feels a bit random and thrown away.
I feel a bit churlish saying this of a gifted storyteller who has been touring this show for a decade to great acclaim. But for all Miller’s brilliance, I’m not sure she ever quite gets to grips with the darker side of ‘I Believe In Unicorns’. And maybe that’s purely due to the original book, but it does ultimately feel strangely underexplored.
