Fourteen years ago Alannah O’Sullivan’s adaptation of Spike Milligan’s Badjelly the Witch launched KidzStuff Theatre for Children. Now it is resurrected in a new production dedicated to co-founder Lewis Rowe, who died last year.  

While the hall is configured in the traverse, most of the action takes place up the small stage end, with the cast & crew-created backdrop and reversible flats setting the various scenes along with the audience’s imaginations. A central pathway, a rear rostrum and a wrap-around walk-way are also used in this well-paced production directed by Kate McGill and Deb McGuire’s lighting design heightens the production values.

Bryony Skillington is a fruity-voiced and deceptively charming dame of a Badjelly, nevertheless to be feared because she is given to making soup of children, except those who go to the theatre – in fact there’s a statute that decrees she would loose her license if she consumed them. Her signature song – sung half way through the show – is delivered with pizzazz.

James Winter and Amelia Reynolds carry the story as Tim and Rose with a relaxed style that gets just earnest enough at times to ensure the momentum of their quest – to find Lucy the cow, who has been taken by Badjelly and her giant assistant Dulboot – is maintained.

They probably realise now, after the opening performance, that you mustn’t ask such questions as “Have you seen Lucy?” if you are going to ignore the answers robustly volunteered by the audience. Either accommodate the answers or don’t ask in the first place.

That said, they interact well with the audience and at this opening Tim happily and gently scooped up a wandering tot, carried across the fast-flowing river they’d just encountered and delivered her safely into her mother arms, to audience acclaim. 

Richard Osborne brings excellent differentiation to his quartet of roles: the thick and downtrodden Dulboot, the bright tree-caring goblin Binklebonk, the morose ex-bobby now trapped in an Apple Tree, and heroic Jim the intrepid Eagle.

It’s the costumes that mostly distinguish Anne Rene Brashier’s Dinglemouse from her Mudwuggle the worm.

As always the young audience’s reception determines whether the show works well or not and the reception given the opening performance suggests KidzStuff has created yet another winner.
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