The Borrowers, Snap Theatre Company. Lynn Robertson Hay’s resonant adaptation of Mary Norton’s book, directed by Andy Graham, fascinates and surprises. Yearning to break free, restless teenage Arrietty’s forays into the human world, where she encounters a Boy and other terrifying delights, match every child’s journey, balancing excitement with security.
Norton’s sagas of the Clock Family, tiny creatures living under the floorboards surviving by “borrowing” from upstairs, reverberate for every age. The play darkly recalls the world of Ann Frank, another teenage diarist writing behind secret walls: the family’s decision to uproot and seek relatives echoing the plight of all refugees in search of a safe home.
Dawn Allsopp’s poignant, 40s design features a quirky menagerie of insects and shuffling furniture forever on the move, like the Borrowers themselves. Props are wheeled, shaken and hung. Sheets turn into a giant hanky, envelope a giant boot in winter drapes, evoking a child’s vivid take on the adult world, with its superior dismissal of human foibles. Mark Pizzey’s rattling score takes the Clocks to the open countryside with its terrors: “shadows, police, fishermen” and finally the dream place, Little Fordham (“Is there such a place, where borrowers can live in peace?”) with the Boy’s wide eyes mirroring those of the audience.
Touring nationally until April. The Borrowers music Pounds 4; teachers pack Pounds 4; cassette and teachers pack Pounds 4.50; Snap Theatre Company, Unit A, Causeway Business Centre, Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire CM23 2UB (0279 504095503066).
