Mr Stink continues at the Chickenshed Theatre, London until 4 August 2018.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
This show is the sort of cheery, uplifting stuff which sends you home with a spring in your step and a smile on your face. It’s inclusive. It’s diverse. And it’s fun.
David Walliams’ whimsical story about a rather unhappy little girl who befriends a tramp, thereby transformatively rehabiliating them both, is a good fit for Chickenshed with its “theatre changing lives” mission. And it was, apparently, Walliams himself who suggested that they do it following the success of last year’s The Midnight Gang.
Lou Stein’s version embellishes the basic story by adding a chorus of townspeople who dance (slick movement direction by Tiia-Mari Makinen) as a visual accompaniment to almost every song.
Lucy-Mae Beacock as story-loving Chloe Crumb (she alternates the role with Lydia Stables) packs oodles of diminutive feistiness. She copes, sadly to start with, on the one hand with her rather appalling mother (Belinda McGuirk – a delightful Mrs Slocombe-style performance in hideous blonde wig) – and on the other with nasty bullying at school.
Beacock is a former (2012 and 2013) Matilda in Matilda theMusical and sings very well. And she looks terrific next to Bradley Davis’ tall, titular Mr Stink whose waist she barely reaches.
Davis finds exactly the right RP voice in the midst of his filthy clothes and the smell which everyone who meets him complains about. It’s gloriously incongruous although (no spoilers) of course there’s eventually a back story to explain it.
It’s Mr Stink’s kindness and wisdom which makes this show the warm and attractive two hours that it is and Davis really catches that and runs with it. There’s lovely comedy too when, for example, he sees off Chloe’s bullies and when he appears on TV with Jeremy Vine who gamely contributes a filmed cameo appearance.
Davis is no singer but it really doesn’t matter much and he is included in only one number anyway.
Also enjoyable are Philip Constantinou as Mr Stink’s very “doggy” dog, Goutham Rohan as the very insistent local shopkeeper, Courtney Dayes (alternating with Maddie Kavanagh) as Chloe’s tiresome younger sister, and Ashley Driver as Chloe’s kind, patient, marginalised father.
A word of praise for Keith Dunne’s ingenious set too. At its centre is the two-storey house the Crumb family live in, complete with dining room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. Nearby is the bench where Chloe chats to Mr Stink in the local park. Elsewhere on stage is the garden shed Chloe invites Mr Stink to live in and a row of houses for the townsfolk to pop in and out of. It’s neat.
The production is directed and adapted from Walliams’ novel by Stein, and credit also to musical director/composer Dave Carey.
Susan Elkin
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