There is barely a boring sentence in Liz Pichon’s books about schoolboy doodler Tom Gates. My nine-year-old daughter, Aggie, about the same age as Tom, stays up late reading them. I can’t put them down either. It’s not just the exuberant narration, there’s also an eye-popping riot of lettering styles and lively sketches of Tom’s friends and family. How, we wonder, will it work on stage in this adaptation, co-written by Pichon with director Neal Foster?
Aggie wants to know if it’s a musical, because Tom and his pals have a band, Dog Zombies, although they mostly spend rehearsals practising rock-star poses and eating biscuits. It’s more of a play with songs and while Pichon’s lyrics are typically witty, and well delivered, I can’t help feeling disappointed that the cast aren’t playing their own instruments School of Rock-style. Still, the compositions – by Pichon’s husband, Mark Flannery – help it all zip along with the pace of the books.
Tom’s doodle world is created through Jackie Trousdale’s sets and costumes and Simon Wainwright’s nifty video design. Animations explode across a huge screen: there are Pichon’s instantly recognisable shooting stars and clusters of psychedelic rainbows. As Tom sketches, the drawings appear on screen. When his dreaded older sister Delia enters, a hand-drawn raincloud hovers above with a flash of lightning. On an often bare stage, it is Pichon’s detailed drawings on the backdrop that chiefly provide the settings for each scene. It’s not as sophisticated as, say, 1927’s shows, but the careful amalgamation of drama and design reflects the well-judged balance Pichon achieves between writing and illustrating.
The casting is just so, too, though Aggie points out that in Pichon’s illustrations the characters are actually all neckless. Matthew Chase (a dead ringer for standup Rhys James) has a winning grin and is styling the right wave of hair as Tom. Aggie thinks Ashley Cousins has a perfectly annoying, squeaky voice as his nemesis, Marcus Meldrew, whose love of vegetables rivals that of Horrid Henry’s Perfect Peter. Rocking dark shades, black clothes and a surly stare, Amy Hargreaves’s Delia rightly looks as if she’s in the Velvet Underground. Aggie finds it funny that Hargreaves is also playing Tom’s sweet and diligent schoolfriend Amy. Others double roles, too, with Cousins a hoot as Tom’s roller-skating Granny.
The story packs in the same sort of scrapes as the novels, and Aggie recognises one or two bits from the books. Tom has been racking up too many sad faces on his performance chart and if he’s not careful he’ll miss the school trip to a biscuit factory. Meanwhile, his Granny and Grandad (“the fossils”) plan to celebrate their long marriage by having another wedding. Secrets are hidden, squabbles are had and disasters are, of course, averted at the 11th hour.
This is a case, then, of an adaptation that adheres closely to the original, making it perhaps more readily embraced by younger children while older ones may hunger for it to be more reimagined than re-created. The performances are done with broad brush strokes in Birmingham Stage Company’s production and Tom’s asides to the audience don’t land with the same intimacy as they do in the book. Mind you, this is a cavernous, 1,400-seat (sold out) venue.
Aggie doesn’t have any quibbles. She just wishes that Rooster, the dog who really does eat homework, had been given a bigger role – and better still, been played by a real dog like in Annie. How many stars would she give it? “Five!” So she really loved it? She nods. As for me, the title of one of Pichon’s books comes to mind: Yes! No. (Maybe …).
