goodnight mister tom by michelle magorian

The highlight of the play is the puppetry, in particular Elisa de Grey’s role in animating Sammy, Mr Tom’s dog. We don’t see his mother tie him up and throw him in a cupboard, we simply watch the stage descending back over him and then discover him in the cupboard later. At one point the stage rises, creaking ominously to reveal William’s dilapidated home in London. The story features child abuse, deprivation and even multiple child deaths, tough topics Wood refuses to ‘sanitise’. Both of these examples lead me to the issue of violence and children. The death of a child character is tastefully done in a flash of light and smoke, to the sound of air raid sirens and bombs. For example, although we see it coming, we’re still shocked when William’s mother slaps him (a woman in the audience behind me mutters, ‘aye, she’s nuts’).

That said, most of the ‘suddenlies’ in the play are very effective, and the audience oohs and aahs at all the appropriate moments.

The famous ‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye’, popularised during WWII by Gracie Fields, gets overdone and is uncomfortably sentimental. In fact, the characters frequently break into song. Yet despite these numerous scene changes, the plot never feels rushed. Just as suddenly, in the second half, we move from a train station, to a bomb shelter in London and back to Dorset, the latter transition smoothly carried out by a nightmarish dream sequence. Suddenly, a boy in a rainbow knitted jumper (Harrison Noble) tap dances his way into William’s life. Suddenly they’re in a school, a shop, an amateur dramatics society. Mr Tom discovers bruises left on William’s skin by his disturbed and violently religious mother (Melle Stewart). Flocks of puppet birds flutter suddenly across the stage. Angus Jackson’s production of this play is no exception to Wood’s motto. David Wood claims the best kind of children’s theatre is full of ‘lots of suddenlies’, by which he means sudden scene changes, lighting changes and bursts of music. As the play unfolds, the two characters form a close bond. The story follows William Beech (Freddy Hawkins), a World War II evacuee billeted in rural Dorset with a reclusive old widower, Mr Tom (David Troughton). Once again, the production proves to be a success. David Wood’s Olivier award-winning adaptation of Goodnight Mr Tom has been revived to celebrate the 35 th anniversary of Michelle Magorian’s classic children’s book.

Goodnight mister tom by michelle magorian