Given all the talent it brings together, The Baddies is as a lesser show than it should be, writes Joyce McMillan
The Baddies, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★
Lost Girls At Bus Stops, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★
As every theatre producer knows, staging musicals is no easy business; it requires tryouts and previews, nips and tucks, and tiny adjustments that can make all the difference between triumph and disaster.
The Lyceum Theatre’s new show The Baddies – based on the 2022 book by Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler, and co-produced with children’s theatre specialists Freckle, of Brighton – may only be 65 minutes long, and aimed mainly at audiences aged three-to-six. Yet it is a real musical nonetheless, featuring half a dozen songs by Joe Stilgoe; and like many musicals at an early stage of development, it seems to have assembled many of the elements of a smash hit show, without quite yet finding the tone and balance that will make it all fall into place.
The story is a fine one, about three unrepentant Baddies in an Alpine meadow – a witch, a ghost and a troll – who are very bad at what they do, and find themselves completely outwitted by a little girl who arrives to take up residence in a nearby cottage.
She defeats them by being kind, polite and unafraid; and this jolly Lyceum adaptation features not only Stilgoe’s witty songs, but a gorgeous mountain set by Jasmine Swan that unfolds and shape-shifts like a glorious life-sized toy, and a thoughtfully expanded script by David Greig and Jackie Crichton that gives a prominent role to the local family of mice, making Mama Mouse the narrator of the show.
At the moment, though, the show is beset by problems of mood and tone that seem designed to keep it at a distance from a 2020’s audience in the designated age-group. Lottie Mae O’Kill’s Mama Mouse adopts a bizarrely posh and prissy 1950s-BBC tone, like Mary Poppins without the magic.
James Stirling’s Ghost and Rachel Bird’s Witch follow her down the same path, with only Dyfric Morris’s Troll adding some down-to-earth street energy; and the jolly wry humour of Stilgoe’s songs only adds to the feeling of having slipped through a time-warp into the age of Watch With Mother.
The result is a wise and knowing belter of a children’s story, with huge resonances for the age of global baddies we live in, delivered in a style that just misses its streak of well-grounded political and psychological realism, and makes it look like nostalgia trip into gentler times.
All of this could be fixed, of course, with a few tweaks of style, and some stronger and better-organised audience interaction. Until those shifts happen, though, The Baddies will set out on its journey – at the Lyceum, and around the UK – as a slightly lesser show than it should be; which seems a shame, given all the talents assembled for the project.
There are no real baddies in Roisin Sheridan-Bryson’s debut Play, Pie and Pint play Lost Girls at Bus Stops; just a slightly old-fashioned tale of two female best friends who are in love with each other, but – for slightly inscrutable reasons, since both know that the other is gay – seem somehow unable to acknowledge their feelings.
The story is set against the backdrop of the Edinburgh Fringe, which Catriona Faint’s bold and cheerfully foul-mouthed Jess navigates with huge confidence, despite having no visible source of funds; and it makes a fine job of capturing the atmosphere of slightly feverish Fringe nights in Edinburgh.
In Laila Noble’s unhurried production, Leyla Aycan’s Iona is a beautiful, steady foil to her passionate friend; in a play whose central premise seems a little out of time, but which still offers two fine characters and a loving portrait of a city, in a love story straight from the heart.
The Baddies is at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until 20 October. Lost Girls At Bus Stops is at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until 12 October, and at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 15-19 October.
