‘Welcome to the happiest place on earth, kid,” snarls Tiny Tim, the caretaker who doesn’t care. Clementine has arrived in a fabled town called Christmas but instead of candy cane lanes she finds crumbled gingerbread, a malfunctioning robot and a shortfall of snow and joy. It was once Christmas every day here but now it’s perennial January. Even the trees are blue.
Thankfully, the newcomer is as zesty as she sounds. With a plan akin to the cheer-spreading finale of Elf, Clementine sets about generating enough festive spirit to restore the town’s glory.
Writer-director Elvi Piper’s quirky 45-minute show for over-threes, presented by Durham’s Gala theatre and Leeds’s Wrongsemble, uses a thrust stage to create cosy intimacy with an audience who share their Christmas wishes with the inquisitive Clementine. This early interaction – slightly muffled by a crooning soundtrack – leads into a story her aunt used to tell her.
The show’s design by Antony Jones is full of retro touches – a sailor dress here, a vintage camera there – to stress its message about handing down Christmas traditions. The central cityscape pleasingly looks like a child’s paper pop-up but with just the robot and the caretaker left resident, it’s tricky to convey a sense of restoring communal merriment.
The way to crank up the town’s power is to share memories, Clementine finds – a nice proposition although it may be lost on young audiences who live more in the moment than through grownups’ past.
The story, partly told with Kathleen Yore’s puppets, is a tad saccharine but there’s plenty of knockabout silliness, from a blizzard of cracker jokes to offbeat outfits and deft physical routines that switch from slo-mo to fast-forward. Piper’s production is well-paced – often dashing and dancing through the story – and there’s a trio of bright performances. Florence Poskitt as the robot and Terence Rae as the caretaker handle the comic business with aplomb while Eve Tucker is effervescent in the main role.
There are also appealing songs by Bayard Bryan and Claire O’Connor, sometimes with choruses told through sign language. It’s a warm, heartfelt show with the sentiment that goodwill should be for life, not just for Christmas. Much like children’s theatre should be too.
• At the Playhouse, Sheffield, until 30 December
