Stick Man

Posted by Chris Gregg at Sunday, 10 December 2023 23:24

Freckle Productions’ clever adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s massively popular children's book Stick Man has arrived at the Royal and Derngate in time for Christmas!

It's never expained how a stick has come to life in this story, but Stick Man lives in a tree with his stick lady love and three stick children, however problems arise when he goes for a morning jog and is, understandably, mistaken for a stick causing a string of unpleasant mishaps to befall him over the following year, from being chewed by a dog to ending up as part of a swan's nest and eventually used as firewood. But will he ever make it back to the family tree?

For a show aimed at young children, you might be expecting giant costumes and lazy production values but this is a very skillfully crafted piece of theatre with the three cast members using a range of skills to keep the audience's attention from live precussion to puppetry, prop manipulation, slapstick and audience participation. Like the book, it's the power of children's imaginations that bring Stick Man to life as the cast tell the story while a Stick Man prop is passed around. There's plenty of singing (often in a clipped 'vintage' posh English accent) and yukele playing. And very clever use of everyday items as props to create everything from rivers, nests and sandcastles to the ocean.

The three members of the cast are all incredibly talented, Aeron-Louis Cadogan as the main Stick Man storyteller brings unexpected emotional depth to the role, Rosie Pepper takes on a huge range of roles from a dog to a child at the beach and even a swan very skillfully and Ben Williamson-Jones jumps from singing and acting to playing saxophone, live percussion and creating sound effects brilliantly.

We took our one and three year old children to see this show and they were completely enthralled from start to finish. They loved the parts where the cast run around the auditorium and when a couple on the beach are using Stick Man as a bat to hit a beachball into the audience. And of course, the appearance of a certain bearded seasonal character near the end was a big hit.

There's plenty in this show to keep the adults entertained as much as the children and as an alternative to a pantomime, this is a great idea for younger children with a shorter attention span as it's only an hour long but I'd recommend it to any Julia Donaldson fans.

Trailer