Have you watched that shit recently?! It’s such a nightmare! Quite apart from the fact that I find marionettes creepy AF, any film which contains lengthy sequences depicting children turning into donkeys, being locked in cages and eaten by a fucking whale does not qualify as wholesome, uncomplicated family fare in my book.
It does make for an intriguing premise for the latest Disney Theatrical screen to stage transfer though. One that is made all the more intriguing for being staged at the National Theatre. Not obvious producing bedfellows, I would argue.
Dennis Kelly is the man tasked with adapting the Disney classic for the modern stage and he delivers an enjoyable skip through the story. My main criticism of this show is that a sense of fluent storytelling and character motivation is notably lacking (which, to be fair, on the latter point at least is something that could equally be said of the film). What we get instead is a series of semi-independent individual scenes and characters doing whatever the hell they want within them. That said, these scenes are well written and extremely good fun. For a family show, they pitch both the emotion, simply expressed but pulling no punches, and the humour exactly right. The for-the-grownups humour is especially well done with some cracking lines mostly delivered by a Jiminy Cricket reimagined as a neurotic millennial - the show’s best touch by far (to Pinocchio, on things that he must watch out for: “then there’s this thing called gluten”).
What the show lacks in written depth it certainly tries to make up for in spectacle. Some of the stagecraft and visual effects on display are fantastic: the glowing blue fire of the Blue Fairy’s star, the flying sequences, the whale, Pinocchio’s growing nose. Even from the third row of the stalls it wasn’t always clear how these things were done, so I’m going to extra-suspend my disbelief and claim they’re actual magic. The oversize puppetry used to make the human-sized actor playing Pinocchio seem small gives a fun sense of perspective (and menace) but I was disappointed that the faces weren’t animated. It sort of ruined the effect of these puppets being actual characters, especially given how sophisticated puppetry in theatre can be these days (War Horse anyone? The Lorax?) Jiminy Cricket is the exception here; by far the smallest puppet but by far the best. The design is a great evocation of the Disney original - and the lighting is amazing - but at times I felt it was a bit swamped in the somewhat cavernous Lyttelton space. Given this is a show backed by glitz-and-hugeness-purveyors-in-chief Disney Theatrical it just felt a bit...beige, I guess. Not bad, not by any means, just not enough.
In a production that’s so puppet heavy, there’s not much by way of traditional acting to talk about. There’s a lot of singing and dancing - the use and expansion of the original Disney songs is very effective - which the energetic and versatile ensemble manage with considerable aplomb. As the only entirely non-puppet actor (somewhat ironically) Joe Idris-Roberts delivers a charismatic, fun and physically dexterous Pinocchio who’s always a pleasure to watch, even though the character himself is much more of a shit than I remembered. Audrey Brisson steals the show though as millennial Jiminy. She’s a joy: tremendous fun, pleasingly annoying and the only actor who really gets to grips with her puppet and embodies their character. Gender blind cast cricket puppets are 100% the way forward.
Pinocchio is not a great piece of writing, or a great production, but for all that it’s impossible to dislike because, more than anything, it’s a show full to bursting with warmth and heart. And the small boy sat next to me absolutely loved it which, I rather suspect, was always intended to be the point.
Pinocchio plays in the Lyttelton Theatre at the NT until 10th April.
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