The Magic Elves (Bristol Old Vic)

Is there anything better than watching the faces of young theatre goers engaging in their first slice of theatre. The looks of delight, of wonderment, a new audience being engaged some of whom might prove to be the new Tom Hiddlestone, the next Marianne Elliot, even a new Ken Tynan. The young audiences are the perfect audience, ready and willing to be swept away by the magic, just as ready to show when the piece is not working. They are more fearsome than the audience of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées rioting after Stravinski’s The Rites of Spring but as charming and knowledgeable as any that walks through the National Theatre foyers.

Both sides of this audience, good and bad, can be seen in Bristol Old Vic’s show for the under 7’s The Magic Elves. It’s a simple story loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Elves and The Shoemaker with dashes of The Red Shoes thrown in for good measure. With music by Kid Carpet who also appears as the owner of a shoe shop that is going under, a book by Mike Ackers with direction by Miranda Cromwell, there is everything you could want from a Christmas show; music, lots of colour and a boo-hiss villain in Mr Numbers who wants Kid Carpet to cough up ‘twenty eight thousand million pounds’ or lose his shop.

Numbers is played by Isabelle Cressy and she and Chris Farish do most of the heavy lifting; as the elves who create shoes whilst throwing Rambert like moves, and as an assortment of other visitors to the shoe shop. Farish catches the eye as a princess who channels David Walliams’ ‘I’m a lady’and as the Queen who croons the most surprising ‘I will survive’ that will be seen this Christmas season.

The music is 70’s heavy which no doubt works for the Mums and Dad’s in the audience but may have less resonance for its younger audience and the material is stretched thin over an hour with the attention spans of some of the younger ones falling and the actors having to work hard to stop it all falling into anarchy, before the dance party at the end allows the young ones to dance to their hearts content. At this point, as we look at the looks of joy on all their little faces we’re forgive anything.