How does Santa go down the chimney? Review – Get a perky little rump | stage

nAside from what’s hidden inside the wrapping paper, here’s a bigger mystery: How does Santa get down the chimney? Mac Barnett’s 2023 picture book of the same name appeals to curious young readers by presenting a festive collection of breaking and entering techniques. Does he find the key under the flower pot, put himself in the mailbox, or even swim through the faucets? Jon Klassen’s illustrations feature a group of reindeer, with mysterious expressions, watching Santa’s increasingly antics.

Directing his own co-production adaptation of Unicorn with Told By an Idiot, Paul Hunter follows the book’s rhythm of a child’s racing imagination, with each far-fetched idea pitched, discarded, and then quickly replaced by another. He turned the book into a kind of variety show, in which audience volunteers are sometimes cast as Santa’s little helpers.

Designer Sonja Smolin created a roof with a massive cut-out section that leaves the stage flanked by two snow-covered slides for performers to slide down. In the show’s energetic opening number that blends rap, jazz, easy listening and Danish folk songs, the entire group transforms into a sleigh for Santa Claus coming to town. Smolin’s costumes are a mish-mash of shorts, fisherman’s hats and cozy capes, all evocative of reindeer.

The cast of four (Julia Innocenti, Nathan Coeli-Dennis, composer Frida Cecilia Rodbrough and choreographer Miki Orita) split the roles and take turns suggesting techniques while others act them out as skits, sometimes with puppets. As you’d expect from Told By an Idiot, there are plenty of quirky visual and audio touches. Sound effects are clearly provided, Foley style, and a giant snowshoe is lowered from above like Monty Python’s giant foot.

By adopting a crazy, scattered approach to the methods, the adaptation loses some of its cute comic book charm, and there’s an inevitable hit-and-miss quality to the routine. They range from the exhausting, including a section simulating a dazzling game show, to the inspirational, with Santa standing at a photocopier to create a flattened, Stanley-style version of himself. The interlude with a child in a hood is more creepy than comedic, and there’s a music hall atmosphere that feels a little off-putting along with extras like Santa climbing into a giant Deliveroo driver’s suitcase.

If Barnett’s occasional rhymes and wordplay aren’t stretched, there’s plenty of physical absurdity to entertain the two-plus-year-old audience, including Santa hitting the chimney with wrapping paper pipes to the tune of jingle bells. The biggest laughs come from the perennial panto “He’s Behind You”, which today’s young audience delivers deafeningly. Maybe Slade’s grandmother is right, old really is better.