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★★★★
It’s difficult to pinpoint why the moment Paddington walks on stage at the start of his new musical is quite so moving.
Spoiler alert: ‘Paddington’ is a small woman (Arti Shah) in a bear costume (by Gabriella Slade), with a regular-sized man (James Hameed) doing the voice and remote controlling the facial expressions from backstage. Which doesn’t sound groundbreaking but it’s enough to make us believe that Paddington is really in the room with us. Which is surely the point of the endeavor.
He’s not the Paddington of the films: he looks different, more teddy-like, and Hameed’s voice is much younger and more boyish than Ben Whishaw’s. He looks more like the Paddington of Michael Bond’s books, but he’s not really him either, on account of all the singing he does and how much more wordy that makes him. He is a new Paddington. But he is, fundamentally, Paddington, right there in the room with us.
Does that make it a good performance? I mean sure, he’s a triple threat: adorable, polite and also a bear. The normal rules for a musical theatre lead are suspended here. But Hameed can sing well, and there’s enough expression in both face and body for Paddington to feel genuinely alive to us. Shah doesn’t really dance, but a couple of elaborately choreographed sequences in which our hero pings around causing chaos are impressively physical.
Main attraction aside, a fine creative team led by director Luke Sheppard has created a very enjoyable show indeed. It’s by and large a stage adaptation of the first Paddington movie, although writer Jessica Swale has been quite free: it’s certainly not trying to simply transpose Paul King’s film onto the stage. It has a looser, more knockabout air, less droll, more cartoonish. The plot beats are basically the same but the specific details and characterisations often play out differently. Which is all to the good. Paddington’s adopted family the Browns are more troubled here, which puts greater tension at the heart of the story. The addition of a talking Cockney pigeon is a choice, but is genuinely a lot of fun. It’s nicely irreverent, and doesn’t sentimentalise our hero – even the inevitable songs about marmalade and hard stares are well-judged.
He’s a triple threat: adorable, polite and also a bear
The plot revolves around Paddington’s arrival from Peru, throwing himself at London in the hope of a new life. He’s taken in by the Browns, but coveted by Victoria Hamilton-Barritt’s bonkers Natural History Museum taxidermist Millicent Clyde, who wishes to stuff Paddington for reasons that are basically a big postcolonial metaphor (the NHM has been very sporting with all this).
What I think Swale and co have identified really well is that Millicent is a fun bit of peril but basically a minor antagonist (not a patch on Paddington 2’s all-time great villain Phoenix Buchanan). This is no reflection on Hamilton-Barritt’s scenery chomping Millicent – she leaves a bigger impression than Nicole Kidman in the film.
But it feels more explicit here that the real danger is the tension within the Brown family, which threatens to leave Paddington homeless. Gutsy comic book artist Mrs Brown (Amy Ellen Richardson) and pedantic risk analyst Mr Brown (Adrian der Gregorian) have clearly grown apart – it’s his unfeeling, none-of-my-concern attitude that endangers both Paddington and the marriage. Even at the end there’s the sense they now only function as a family with the bear there.
Maybe that’s a postcolonial metaphor too: Paddington the Musical hardly preaches, but it’s unabashedly celebratory of London, immigration and multiculturalism as a positive legacy of colonialism.
The songs by McFly’s Tom Fletcher are very decent: none are sidesplittingly funny, though there are some nicely droll numbers about London, marmalade and whatnot. The heart of it actually lies in big sweeping ballads like ‘The Explorer and the Bear’ and ‘One of Us’ – they add a sense of yearning that nicely contrasts with the goofier action of the actual story. It’s a little short on bangers but there’s a good sprinkling of decent choruses.
Sheppard is clearly in his element with the OTT setpieces. Youngsters will not be bored. A lot of stuff gets dropped on or squirted at the audience. The Savoy has an intimacy to it that suits a child-friendly show, and Tom Pye’s lovely, junk-strewn set reaches out beyond the stage, covering up the theatre’s previous silvery glitz with warm hues and welcoming clutter.
The biggest flaw is that it can’t quite settle on who it wants to be about. Yes, Paddington. But he can’t be the sole focus. There are a lot of characters here, and loads of them get a song or two; it’s just a bit much, and I’d say the show would be stronger if it had really zeroed in on the Browns rather than, say, spending quite so much time on the Geographers’ Guild. Tom Edden is very enjoyable as nuisance neighbour Mr Curry. But his move into fourth wall-breaking panto-style mugging in the second half feels like another unnecessary element in an already busy mix.
It’s a luxury musical that feels overstuffed at times. Some of the scrappiness of Matilda wouldn’t go amiss. But then Matilda doesn't have a singing bear in it. When the maximalism works, it really works. And Paddington (the film) was always somewhat imperfect source material: let it run for a few years then have the same team make Paddington 2 the Musical, I say.
Paddington the Musical is at the Savoy Theatre, booking to Oct 25 2026. Buy tickets here.
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