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The Snowman The ICC, Birmingham **** IT IS amazing what you can achieve with a
couple of lengths of wire, an evocative tune and a video projection of a
snowstorm. To the little girl in front of me it was the
whole magical world of Christmas unfolding on the International
Convention Centre stage before her and her face positively lit up as the
Snowman and his boy companion took to the skies for the first time in
Birmingham Rep's celebrated production of Raymond Briggs' classic tale. With their home closed until mid-2013and the
completion of the new library development the Rep are a moveable feast
these days but the disadvantage of having no home has been turned into
the advantage of being able to run two productions at once with the
excellent Sleeping Beauty aimed at the Over-7s on at The
Crescent and. just up the road along Broad Street, The Snowman
has landed at The ICC aimed at a younger starting age of about three or
so. The show has been running for 18 years since it
first arrived on stage with music and lyrics by Howard Blake, who wrote
the original film score, choreography by Robert North and directed by
the then Rep artistic director Bill Alexander and there are children who
saw the early production now grown up and taking their own children
along. Like the Birmingham Royal Ballet's Nutcracker
it has become part of the city's Christmas tradition, a rite of passage
along the road of growing up. There are a couple of changes in this year's
production, particularly at the and, minor and hardly a detraction, but
I suspect they are brought about by the ICC theatre, plush as it is,
being aimed more at huge corporate gatherings, and full of the
electronic wizardry of spin, smoke and mirrors rather than full blown
theatrical productions employing the magic of the illusionist with the
designer's alchemy of canvas, plywood and battens. For those who do not know the tale a young boy,
played with the right level of childish excitement by Isaac Rouse ,
makes a snowman, played with a sort of avuncular charm by Chris Sweeney,
and then goes to bed. He awakes during the night, goes out to check his
snowman and find that he is not only all right but is alive and let the
adventure begin. The first explore the house and we have a banana,
coconut and pineapple all dancing around, a toy solider and a music box
ballerina , then outside we have a fox, badger, rabbit, squirrel and
reindeer before heading off to the polar regions where we meet penguins,
a collection of snowmen of various nationalities and, of course, Father
Christmas. Our Brummie snowman is quite taken with the Ice
Princess, danced beautifully by the diminutive ballerina Caroline
Crawley, who also dances the music box ballerina. But he has stiff
competition from the spikey, icicle clad Jack Frost, danced by
Giuseppe Lazzara, that is until Scottish snow-woman Scotty, played by
Emma Fisher, takes out the icy side of the love triangle with a Glasgow
kiss . . . Jimmy! Jimmy Frost is nah sa bold with a broken nosicle
. . . Snowman and the boy fly home and the boy returns
to bed only to find in the morning that the snow has melted and his
snowman is just a pile of a wet hat and scarf – but then it snows and
there is the promise of another Snowman to come. As a show it is a delight for all ages but
particularly for young children who see a tale that doesn't rely on
words but is just a collection of scenes that tell a story and it is a
story that you suspect will be charming Birmingham for many more years
to come. Roger Clarke
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