It's that time of the year again, when theatre programmes are suddenly full of word searches and actors find that they are speaking out into a low murmur of excited young voices and rustling sweet papers. To celebrate both the forthcoming festive season and the 20th anniversary of its publication, Roald Dahl's much-loved children's classic The BFG returns to the stage.
The Big Friendly Giant is, as his name implies, rather on the large side, "four times as tall as the tallest human", with each stride he takes, "as long as a tennis court". Thus the most obvious problem that any adaptation will come up against is one of scale, of how to portray the BFG's stated ability
to hold little orphan Sophie in the palm of his hand.
Adaptor/director David Wood starts off here by fudging the issue: Sophie (Rebecca Rainsford) manipulates a miniature puppet version of herself, to rather disconcerting effect. Only when the unlikely pair find themselves breakfasting with the Queen in Buckingham Palace is a suitably sized replica of the BFG unveiled atop a grand piano, to gasps of delight from children of all ages in the audience.
Wood has mistakenly gone down the route so beloved of those transferring tales from page to stage and used a framing device for the narrative. Thus we have another Sophie being given a copy of the book for her birthday, and urging her friends and family to join her in re-enacting its contents. All this appears to do is saddle the play with an unsuitable set - a little girl's pink and fluffy bedroom - of which it struggles to get shot. Even Verity Anne Meldrum's imperious portrayal of the Queen has difficulty overcoming the fact that Her Majesty is consigned to sleeping in a child's bed in a room full of stuffed toys. It would have been far better to follow Dahl's lead, and to open with the BFG snitching Sophie away from the orphanage.
But as the big man himself might say, "don't gobblefunk around" with all this carping. Anthony Pedley, whose somewhat alarming claim to fame is that he has played the role around 1,380 times on stage, is cracking in the title role, bursting with the giant's "jumbly" charm, even if no adaptation could hope to convey in full his gloriously idiosyncratic language, for a true appreciation of which, only the text will suffice. Catch this production by all means, but hurry to a bookshop afterwards for true imaginative riches.
Showing at the Playhouse Theatre until 5 January. Box office: 020 7907 7000.
The BFG (Big Friendly Giant)
