There’s a buzz in the theatre and the children in the audience, including Ceci (aged three), hold their breath. When will the Slightly Annoying Elephant – pulled straight from David Walliams’s bestselling picture book – arrive in young Sam’s living room? The anticipation builds and – finally! – the elephant arrives. But let’s just name the elephant in the room, shall we? This one is a bit of a disappointment.
Just like Tony Ross’s original illustrations, the elephant in question is very bright and very blue. Ceci can just about handle that. In fact, the wacky colour choice makes her giggle. But there’s something about this elephant, designed with broad-brush sweeps by Maia Kirkman-Richards, that doesn’t convince. Crucially (and this will come as no great surprise), the elephant is really very big. Too big, perhaps, for the Little Angel theatre. As the elephant makes himself at home and takes a shower, watches TV and has a nap, bits of his body disappear. His ears detach and his body vanishes completely. It all feels a bit awkward and halts the imagination in its tracks – a suspicion confirmed when Ceci whispers to me: “That’s someone dressed up as an elephant!”
It isn’t just the elephant’s shape and size, though. His character is fairly hard to stomach too. Puppeteer Elaine Hartley plays the elephant with grumpy gusto but he’s a horrible bully with a horrible catchphrase, boomed out in a horrible voice (“Silly boooooy!”). That leaves the kids with very little to latch on to. Heidi Goldsmith is perfectly likable as Sam, particularly when she sings Tom Gray’s catchy new songs, but her performance feels a little forced. In fact, there’s something about Samantha Lane’s production that feels a little overblown. It’s too loud, too bright and too brash – especially for a theatre where subtle detail and gentle charm tend to work so well.
The story jumps back and forth, as we learn about the elephant’s journey from the zoo to Sam’s living room. There are some fun set pieces and there’s a neat adaptability about Hu’s set, which transforms from a zoo to an aeroplane and home again with just a few subtle shifts. But the story is quite tough for the children to follow and Ceci’s concentration wanes.
As we watched the elephant take poor Sam for a ride, and destroy his shiny red bicycle, I hoped there might be a message hidden in here. Don’t let the bullies win, perhaps? Yet the show ends on a throwaway note – something about reading the small print (you had to be there, I guess). Fun, I suppose. But I can’t help wishing for more.
