REVIEW: Winnie The Pooh – King’s Theatre, Glasgow
Following a year in the Hundred Acre Wood as the seasons slowly change, Winnie the Pooh at the King’s Theatre this week is a gentle, warm-hearted amble through a mixture of the beloved bear and his friends’ escapades: Pooh gets stuck up a tree following his favourite pursuit, finding hunny; Piglet gets swept away on a kite; Eeyore bumbles along as only he could; Rabbit’s veg patch is trampled; Owl shares their wisdom and, of course, there’s Tigger’s boundless energy. Kanga, Roo, Rabbit and Christopher Robin all make appearances too and there’s a momentary game of Pooh Sticks.
It features a selection of songs by the Sherman Brothers, originally from the Disney adaptations of A.A. Milne’s tales. The familiar signature tune Winnie the Pooh is here, as is The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers and Whoop De Dooper Bounce, the latter two featuring twice each. The music nicely enhances the action but outside the familiar tunes, the songs are largely forgettable, and some are only a few verses long. That said, while this is not exactly a full-blown musical, it is an enchanting children’s play with music.
It features a selection of songs by the Sherman Brothers, originally from the Disney adaptations of A.A. Milne’s tales. The familiar signature tune Winnie the Pooh is here, as is The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers and Whoop De Dooper Bounce, the latter two featuring twice each. The music nicely enhances the action but outside the familiar tunes, the songs are largely forgettable, and some are only a few verses long. That said, while this is not exactly a full-blown musical, it is an enchanting children’s play with music.
Winnie The Pooh relies heavily on the beautifully crafted puppets, the delightful set, and the atmosphere-enhancing lighting, and it needs to as the plot is paper-thin. The entire production is a mash-up of many moments from Milne’s stories. The short running time means that each character has their moment in the spotlight but are not exactly fully realised. To its credit, it manages to reflect Milne’s almost Taoist philosophy as Owl dispenses some life lessons for the kiddies throughout.
The large-scale puppets are impressive and as a result, the actors/puppeteers are on full view, as is their enthusiasm and energy. It’s impossible for your attention not to be drawn to the actor and away from the character, however, it is largely visually captivating enough to ensure that it works for the most part. The biggest concern about the production is the inability to hear what the characters are saying, it is woefully under-amplified, bearing in mind that it has to rise above the chatter of the audience. Besides Pooh, the characters have American accents, but diction is a huge problem, and it resigns the largest part of the dialogue into the ether. Benjamin Durham’s accent choices for Pooh are unfathomable, it wavers all over the place, neither sounding like the movie version of Pooh or a strong enough acting choice to drive the character to the forefront of the action.
Almost 100 years after his first appearance in the poem The Teddy Bear, Pooh is as big a draw as he always was. It’s a glimpse of a gentler, kinder world and the slow pacing is a refreshing change from the supercharged world we live in. However, one can’t help feeling that the rich source material has so much potential to be a block-busting, box-office success of a musical.
Runs until 22 July 2023 | Image: Contributed
