Room On the Broom – Lyric Theatre

(L>R) David Garrud, Emma MacLennan, Daniel Foxsmith and Yvette Clutterbuck in Room On the Broom at the Lyric Theatre, London. Picture: Helen Warner

Room On the Broom continues at the Lyric Theatre, London, until 11 January.

When Grandpa said he had tickets for Room On the Broom, I jumped at the chance even though it meant giving up my Sunday ride on Polly the pony.

After all, I loved and almost knew by heart the best-selling book by Julia Donaldson with those great illustrations by Axel Scheffler as well as their other stories The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child (the theatre company Tall Stories which created this show did versions of those books too).

And this show was also going to have a lot of new songs as well, which I’m told were written by Robin Price and John Fiber and Andy Shaw of Shock Productions. Well, there were no shocks in the show as it was very faithful to the book and Mr Scheffler’s clever drawings.

The cast of four were all great. I liked the Cat, played by Emma MacLennan, the best. As you can guess from her name, she was a Scottish cat and a marmalade one judging by her costume. Emma led the company on my favourite song ‘Iggety Ziggety’ which had a lot of audience participation too, which was fun.

I also enjoyed ‘Frog Stomp’ and ‘Witch and Chips’. That last one was sung by the horrible Dragon who wanted to make a meal of the Witch. He was played by Daniel Foxsmith who also handled the Bird puppet, a wonderful green creation who had his own song called ‘She’s Only Gorn and Left Me On Me Own’. So funny!

The Dog, who had a very wiggly-waggly tail, and the Frog, who had very long back legs and a silly face, were David Garrud in disguise while the Witch was nicely brought to life by Yvette Clutterbuck.

She lost her hat and broke her broom because too many passengers were trying to ride it. But they all contributed to a magic potion that created a far posher broom with comfy seats.

The theatre was almost full even though it was the fourth performance of the weekend so it looks as if Room On the Broom is going to be very successful over Christmas and the New Year. If it makes a lot of money I hope they don’t give any of it to that nasty Dragon.

Sad to say, it was all over in an hour. It was a long way to go for such a short time as we had to take two trains to get there. But maybe it was plenty long enough for the four and five-year-olds.

My brother Ollie, who’s four, laughed a lot at the noisy snoring on-stage but found it a bit hard to keep up and by the end was more interested in the roast chicken and chips that Grandpa had promised us. So an hour is probably enough if you are very young.

I don’t suppose any of the songs will be on X Factor but we were singing ‘Iggety Ziggety’ all the while we were walking round after the show looking at posters for Les Misérables and Miss Saigon which Grandpa and/or Mummy have promised to take me to one day.

But ‘Broom’ was a smashing day out for now and I could easily see it all over again.

Incidentally, the set, which was designed by Morgan Large, had a lot of atmosphere, and we also have to thank the director, Olivia Jacobs, for putting heart and soul into this spellbinding adventure.

Scarlett Maxwell, aged seven (as told to Grandpa Jeremy Chapman)

www.roomonthebroomlive.co.uk