Watership Down

Synopsis

Join a band of rebel rabbits for the ultimate adventure! When Fiver senses danger, a small band of rabbits make a hurried escape in search of safety - a high place, where they can spot enemies for miles around. They must stick together, be quick and be cunning. But the real threat to their future is greater than a thousand enemies, and they will risk their lives confronting the terrifying General Woundwort to overcome it!

Our Review:

28 November 2006

It is a sight that would gladden the heart of campaigning television chef Jamie Oliver: an audience of children at one of the season’s first Christmas shows being pelted not with chocolates or lollypops but with shards of raw carrot. Another victory for the food police!

This is only appropriate, of course, as Richard Adams’s 1972 classic children’s book did for bunny rabbits what Kenneth Grahame did for riverbank wildlife and J R Tolkein for the hobbits. Directing and designing a new stage adaptation by Rona Munro, Melly Still continues her campaign to bring boisterous high spirits and a harder edge to children’s theatre that began in her collaborations with Tim Supple at the Young Vic and continued triumphantly last year with Coram Boy at the National Theatre, a show that has already achieved cult status and returns to the Olivier for a straight run tomorrow night (29 Nov).

With Watership Down, she has certainly provided...

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Latest User Review

195.82.123.181) - 29 November 2006:

I found this absolutely riveting: Melly Still's high energy, high precision production may not have the characteristic feel-good factor of most Xmas entertainments, but it is dynamic, engaging and ultimately deeply moving. My only cavils would be that the story-telling in Rona Munro's bold adaptation takes a while to get going, and so you need to concentrate to get what is happening, and it might be a bit dark for more sensitive youngsters. Nonetheless, the children and adults alike at the performance I attended were spellbound. The same imagination and sense of theatricality that so thrillingly informs Coram Boy is clearly at work here. The company perform with commitment and flair; I especially liked Matthew Burgess' heroic, athletic Hazel, Richard Simons' hilarious Kehaar and Joseph Traynor's sensitive Fiver. All in all, a scary, moving, exhilarating treat. Highly recommended....

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