Tall Stories is a company that has made a name for entertaining children and family shows. This year, they bring Julia Donaldsons rhyming story to life in an entertaining stage adaptation in which the audience sees the witch travel across the skies on her broom with her cat to the back of beyond to fight a dragon. On the way, she meets a dog, a bird and a frog, who end up going on the adventure, working together to bring about a happy ending. Tall Stories seem to have waved their own magic wand over this production, which works on every level. There are songs which had the otherwise noisy audience of young children sit spellbound, hanging on every word. The absolutely adorable dog puppet steals the show. The staging is strong, and convincingly enables actors to inhabit both earth and sky simultaneously. The set is magical. Any problems with audibility seemed to have been sorted out. My one gripe with the show is that in a large theatre, outside the songs, the younger members of the audience fidgeted and lost attention. Opportunities for interaction between the actors and the audience were missed. The action took place solely on stage, with no attempt made to include the audience until the end, and no attempt made by the actors to travel out into the auditorium during the show. Far from breaking the spell, more interaction with the audience would have enhanced the magic.
