Hugless Douglas at the Lawrence Batley Theatre Review
Hugless Douglas
Lawrence Batley Theatre
23-24 August 2014
Reviewed by Chris Legg
The performance of Hugless Douglas took place at 2pm in the courtyard at the front of the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield, on a mercifully sunny and mild 24 August. This pantomime is based, I understand, on the series of books by David Melling, which neither I nor my daughters know at all; as it quickly turned out, this lack of prior knowledge didn’t matter one bit.
The simple four-piece set took up about a third of the courtyard and consisted of two big wooden “flats” in the shape of trees, a further flat in the shape of a bush with two face-holes, and a hillock-cum-house, all of which were used to full effect during the course of the story. Props ranged from the simple (oversized alarm clocks, toothbrushes, etc.) to the ingenious (flocks of sheep puppets on wheels!). The Blunderbus Theatre Company provided a cast of three – bear-suited Douglas himself, plus a male and female helper/commentator in primary-coloured t-shirts and dungaree-shorts. The story followed the sleepy, dopey, clumsy and, it transpired, navigationally challenged protagonist as he set out one morning from Mum’s house on a quest to find “the perfect hug”, a search which led him… well, I’m sure any bedtime-story-savvy grown-up will be able to guess where, but hopefully it proved a surprise for all the little ’uns in attendance!
The action proceeded via a mixture of extended slapstick routines, lots of tickling, poking and pretend mess-making from the cast, who pitched their exaggerated acting perfectly, songs based on variations on the same easily-memorised melody (think CBeebies-style), and simple dialogues and to-the-audience monologues. Sound effects and music, when not provided by the ukulele-and-tambourine-equipped cast members themselves, were relayed via a laptop-plus-PA set-up, over which judiciously spaced snippets of narration (presumably using the original words) were also employed. Audience participation, thankfully for someone who tends to squirm at such things, was largely limited to the giving and receiving of hugs, map-holding, and joining in with the odd song-and-dance routine. The humour was, again, very much at the CBeebies level, although there were odd jokes for the grown-ups too, such as a sequence where desperate attempts were made to cover up the “unclad” Douglas’s modesty.
It all added up to a very enjoyable 50 minutes for little kids and grown-up kids alike. The feedback from my two was summed up in the one exclamation “funny!” – when pressed further by the sound director/meet-and-greet lady afterwards, one said that she liked “the ending”, the other “all of it”; both left the theatre skipping and humming the aforementioned tune. There is only one qualification I would make to this assessment and that is that the ideal audience is definitely 3-4-year-old pre-schoolers, so children much older than that might find themselves getting a little bored (or “tired of it”, as one of my 5 year olds put it).
Rating: 4/5
For shows at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield visit www.thelbt.co.uk.
Blunderbus Theatre presents Hugless Douglas is currently touring the UK, for more information at tour dates visit www.huglessdouglaslive.com.
Lawrence Batley Theatre, Queen’s Square, Queen Street, Huddersfield, HD1 2SP
