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Review: I Want My Hat Back Trilogy, The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath – ‘From start to finish, it’s just a delight’
During the 2020 lockdown, Little Angel Theatre’s Ian Nicholson and Sam Wilde delighted tens of thousands of young children and their families with a series of remarkable, free-to-watch, mini puppet shows from home.
Based on – and very faithful to – Jon Klassen’s celebrated ‘hat’ trilogy, the videos for I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat, and We Found a Hat are all still freely available online.
Now, the company is touring with all three shows, blown up from mini to theatrical size, and performed by the excellent Imogen Khan and Joe Boylan, alongside the 94 separate puppets – count them! – they manipulate during the trilogy.
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A bear has lost his hat. What if he never sees it again? WAIT! He has seen his hat.
A fish has stolen a hat. And he’ll probably get away with it. Probably.
Two turtles have found a hat. The hat looks good on both of them. But there are two turtles. And there is only one hat.
The puppets are nothing short of a triumph. The cardboard, almost 2D aesthetic is entirely in keeping with Klassen’s beautifully muted illustration style and palette.
One iteration of the bear – in horizontal, sleeping mode, has a tummy that expands and contracts with every snore. Another has legs attached to a wheel that can be spun to show the bear ‘running’. And the distinctive eye movements that pepper Klassen’s trilogy – wryly reflecting the ruminations of his characters – are here underscored brilliantly, not least when they are spot- or torch-lit at that crucial moment of realisation.
All that said, just like Klassen’s lean narration and dialogue, the simplicity of these cardboard creations belies a philosophical complexity that all great children’s stories must hanker after.
Through pared down, easy-to-follow storytelling and bundles of giggle-inducing humour, the audience is left reckoning with some weighty moral questions: what is honesty? Why is empathy important? Why should we root for the power of friendship over consumerism?
Sam Wilde’s gorgeously simple design and staging is enhanced by inventive lighting from Sherry Coenen, and Jim Whitcher’s excellent composition and sound, which skilfully underscores each new realm in which we find ourselves.
The pacing and transitioning from one story to the next is elegant, and pitched exactly right for its young audience – who, it’s worth saying, are just as happy with the slapstick sequences, sound effects and opportunities to join in with hand puppetry along the way, as they are with the overall narrative arc.
The middle story in particular is unapologetically dark in places – Klassen has cited Hitchcock’s Psycho as a key inspiration for what happens to his unreliable fish narrator as they reckon with their guilt.
But that is also the enduring appeal of Klassen’s nuanced, arch storytelling. From start to finish, it’s just a delight.
I Want My Hat Back Trilogy (age recommendation +3-6) is at the egg, Theatre Royal Bath on March 1-5; showtimes vary. Tickets are available at www.theatreroyal.org.uk.
The tour continues at Tobacco Factory Theatres from March 31-April 9; showtimes at 10.30am and 12.30pm. Tickets are available at www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com.
All photos: Suzi Corker (note the photos show Imogen Khan variously with previous co-stars Simon Lyshon and Ian Nicholson)
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