★★★☆☆
Three Stars
Sitting down in the St. Peter’s College Masters’ Gardens surrounded by about twenty schoolchildren, I was really glad I had decided to bring friends. Although I thought it would be the kind of play you’d only want to go see if you’d read Wind in the Willows as a kid, between the three of us there the only memories we could peace together was Mr Toad driving a car at some point, so it felt like I was seeing it for the first time.
It was an energetic and unexpectedly humorous production. Being an outside performance, there were unfortunately a few weather incidents; when Ratty spoke of the ‘wind picking up’ the wind rather spookily did begin to blow, and it subsequently rained, at which point we were smoothly ushered into the bar for twenty minutes whilst they moved to the chapel.
We soon met all of the characters that we knew and loved; Mole was bizarrely convincing, Mr. Fox gave a very polished performance, and the cockney element of the ‘weasel gang’ was a nice touch. However, the real star of the whole performance was Mr. Toad. Aside the fact I’m convinced he has some relation to Stephen Fry, he gave a performance that had more energy than all the other actors put together. The guitar, violin and flute performing specially-composed music also gave this performance the rural glaze it was attempting to create.
If I had one criticism, it would be that the play occasionally treads a fine line between theatre and pantomime, particularly in the second half with the final battle at Toad Hall and Toad’s songs as a washer-woman. The narrator was also a slightly unnecessary part of the production; every time he was on stage, he was narrating conversations that the characters were miming to each other, not to mention that at one point he seemed to be literally reading from the book. On the whole, it had some merits, and it did very well at making the material accessible to both children and adults, but there were no pleasant surprises. Worth going to if you have a free evening, but overall it didn’t blow me away.
