The Borrowers
Gate Theatre, Dublin
★★★☆☆
Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, a classic of mid-20th-century English children’s literature, has been endlessly adapted for every appropriate medium. The tale of tiny folk with sticky fingers was a flashy film with John Goodman in the 1990s. Ian Holm and Christopher Eccleston were in different TV adaptations. Studio Ghibli produced a lovely animated version titled Arrietty in 2010.
Among the pleasures of this Irish-set production, derived from an adaptation by Charles Way for the Polka Theatre in London, is the witty introduction of domestic brands to the catalogue of items recycled as minute furniture.
When we first meet the Clock family – three sprites who access the human world through the device that gives them their name – they are gossiping before a cupboard constructed from a Warholian Brillo-pad box. There is another item repurposed from a Ritchie’s Milky Mints container. Arrietty (Claire O’Leary), the piece’s perky young protagonist, is wearing a dress bearing the logo of TK red lemonade. One of the biggest laughs of the evening accompanies the late arrival of an Irish brand that always raises a nostalgic flush. (I won’t spoil it.)
Norton, who moved to Ireland in her later years, set The Borrowers, first of a series, among the deprivations of postwar Britain. A few tweaks have been required. Sickly Tom (David Rawle), among the fully sized characters, now arrives to the country pile from not-that-far-off scary Dublin rather than properly-far-off, newly postcolonial India.
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Early in his stay, after being scolded by the frightening Mrs Driver (Ruth McGill), he encounters Arrietty and inadvertently sets in motion events that will ultimately see the wee family, completed by Aoife Mulholland as mum Homily and Ben Morris as dad Pod, embarking on an odyssey across adjoining fields – yawning steppes to the Clocks. Along the way they encounter Martin Beanz Warde, always a warm presence, as a friendly Traveller unfazed by littler people.
Under the direction of Róisín McBrinn, the production people have a ball making sense of their remit. When about the larger world, the Borrowers are rendered as projections, cunningly positioned dolls, disturbances among hiding places and, in one moment of brave self-consciousness, by an actor shoving her head through blackout curtains over a tiny representation of her character’s decapitated body.
Nesting proscenium arches slide back to allow projections of clock innards, rusty plumbing and enormous grasses. Meanwhile the actors belt their way through efficient songs in the venerable “rock musical” style by Fionn Foley.
Launched at family audiences for the festive season, The Borrowers is thin on narrative complexity, but there is no shortage of broadly rendered Good Fun (a commodity valued highly at this time of year). The actors often play to the audience in the style of a traditional pantomime. Ruth McGill, in particular, relishes the opportunity to scowl and snarl as the inexplicably aggrieved cook. And it all ends with a rousing singalong that just about gets away with unfiltered positivity.
Will entertain the little ones. Will convince demanding parents they are watching a respectable literary adaptation.
Runs at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, until Sunday, January 12th
