Adapted famously by Alan Bennett from the 1908 children’s classic by Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows can seldom have been staged in a more sublimely apt location than this curving riverside niche in the Botanic Gardens.

The audience occupies one bank of the river, spread among picnic blankets and baskets on a gentle slope.  Across the river, a small jetty-like construction, with adjoining pathways, shrubberies and copses of larger trees seems to be the world of the play … until the actors started rowing, swimming, floundering, escaping, pursuing, whatever, across and through the river, mounting the opposite bank, holding picnics, scrambling through the audience, driving cars and making arrests behind the crowd and splashing back through them across the river to the platforms again for dramatic dénouements. 

The use of the river and the whole space is inspired and will probably make the experience one the children present (of whom there were many) will never forget.

Alan Bennett has focused on Toad’s story, as have most of the adapters of Grahame’s book, and though Mole’s rebellion against working class regime (spring cleaning) and Rat’s kindly initiation of Mole to the ways of the river get the show going, from very early on, the show belongs to Toad.  Mole’s journey to social maturity, the Rat’s inner conflict and the role of the god Pan (other than as a theatrical presence) are excised.  The Wild Wooders are given on-going villains’ roles to keep the story tense and exciting. 

The show is played as a pantomime, with twee costumed animals all over the first few scenes and many later ones.  Part of this, I am sure, is in the script, and in Alan Bennett’s pursuing this story as a metaphor for a romantic memory of England, though deliciously interspersed with ironic and shocking comments that bring us refreshingly into the present. 

Toad, brilliantly played by Mark Hadlow, occupies our attention in all the right ways.  He is a child (inside a grown-up), seeking attention and intensely vulnerable.  Hadlow knows how to negotiate the balance between the essentially pantomime nature of the show and cod comedy, and finds a delightful connection with the audience. 

Several other actors, including Gillian Bartram as the Washerwoman /Bargelady and Terry Regan as the Magistrate also strike this tricky balance.  Others struggle and look and sound a bit ham.  

Some of the staging and choreography clunks – as do the set pieces, though in an appropriate way: the caravan, the train, the barge etc are terrific examples of Julian Southgate’s genius, and are handled well by the cast. 

The slow-motion fight for Toad Hall is the rightful climax of the evening, though as my 11-year-old nephew accurately noted, there were several different tempi among the fighters in the opening performance, not all dictated by the music. 

However, if you have a child to take to a show, do not hesitate for a moment.  The child will love this.   

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