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The Barbican’s Christmas show for the very young (three months to three years) whisks its tiny audience off to a winter wonderland with a rodent population of one.
Wrapped up in his woollens, ‘Snow Mouse’ performer Frank Wurzinger gamely pretends that the beautifully dressed Pit is covered in snow. The tots are well aware that it’s in fact layered in cotton wool, pom poms, and other assorted cuddly things, and the room crackles with low-level anarchy as determined youngsters try to clamber onto the set, while parents and staff try to retrieve them.
It all adds to the sweet mania of ‘Snow Mouse’, a collaboration between the theatre company Travelling Light and Bath young person’s theatre the egg. The show is barely half an hour long, and the plot basically goes: man larks about in snow, finds a large snoring mouse (a puppet operated by Wurzinger), man and mouse lark about in snow together, ends. But it’s lovely and big-hearted, a simple celebration of friendship and frost, underpinned by Wurzinger’s slightly manic performance, which has a sort of freeform, ’70s kids’ TV quality to it as the mouse boings off audience heads and seems to generally riff off whatever’s in front of it.
The British can have a complicated relationship with real snow – but there’s nothing not to love about this fluffy fantasia.