Shhh…A Christmas Story (Newcastle)

A cast of five bring this year’s Christmas show to the little ones at Northern Stage.

If the reaction of these small theatre goers is anything to go by, they will be attending the theatre in years to come. Well done to all concerned.

The play revolves around a ‘forgotten’ Christmas present, and the subsequent trials of retrieving it from the place of work of a forgetful father. The library is the home of great wisdom and knowledge, but also of great evil and destruction, not only of learning that books provide, but also from the sinister bookworm who is destroying the entire stock of books with his voracious appetite. When the father is taken away by the head of the library for supposedly defacing and damaging the books, his daughter has the arduous task of saving her father’s reputation, restoring the library to normality and of capturing the greedy bookworm. We find the daughter, our young heroine, travelling through various genres of books and ‘letting fly’ the imagination created when stepping inside them!

The cast including Georgina Hall, Ruth Johnson, Carl Kennedy, Abigail Moffat and David Thomas Walton all tell this tale with enthusiasm and gusto. They need it, as children of such a young age are difficult to keep enthralled for any great length of time, so a nod in the general direction of their director Mark Calvert for keeping them enchanted.

But enthralled they were (and me) for this is a truly magical tale and has some very touching moments. Lots of slapstick, song and dance, interactivity and imaginative use of space, set and costume. A first class play to introduce children to the world of books, but also theatre. Its heart-warming to know that in this age of mobile technology, the X factor generation etc, etc, there is a pocket, however small, that remains true to what is important in teaching our youngest members of society.