25 November – 21 December
As the first Wise Children production specifically created for The Lucky Chance, the company’s performance, rehearsal and teaching space based in Frome, this performance has all the magical qualities we have come to expect from Artistic Director Emma Rice, formerly at Knee High then the Globe. Previously a Methodist church, The Lucky Chance has been lovingly transformed into a welcoming space where a bright pink neon sign behind the bar reads “Hope for the Heart – Stories for the Soul”, a welcome message on a dark, wet Somerset night.
All Emma Rice productions I have been to have had common denominators. Music is intrinsic to the storytelling, as is puppetry and any number of theatrical devices that make it impossible not to be engaged as an audience. This performance of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, originally written in 1945 for the Welsh iteration of Children’s Hour on the BBC’s Home Service, was no exception. The piece unfolded like a theatrical advent calendar, revealing its special secrets one by one – a magical jewellery box of a show.
Driving this intimate story on was the extraordinary Katy Owen in the role of Thomas. Appropriately trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Owen’s was an electrically charged performance in which she was able to weave the Welsh language seamlessly around and into the telling without losing an English audience. Owen’s fellow actor/musicians, Tom Fox (accordion), Simon Oskarsson (Flugelhorn) and Robyn Sinclair, all attired, like Owen, in period cardigans and cloth caps, were complemented by composer Ian Ross at the piano – a tack-sharp ensemble, always empathetic to the nostalgic qualities of the piece, but up for fun too.
On a stage that resembled a life-sized, Tardis-like dolls house – with double windowed doors that opened out to reveal a small lighted room within, and a platform above with a fireman’s pole exit, all four players conjured a genuine childish glee at their circumstances – endless snow (lots of cut-up paper) to play in, cats to throw snowballs at, monsters to imagine and escape from.
As the story progressed, images of the protagonists (Mr and Mrs Protheroe, Auntie Dosie, Auntie Hannah, Mr Daniel) appear on a round screen stage left and are passed around the audience as black and white mounted photographs – in our hands they feel like ours. Rolled-up white socks that double as snowballs are thrown to the audience to be thrown back. White blinds are rolled down inside the windows of the ‘house’ on which silhouettes of snowflakes glide down, hand-operated figures appear. And all the while Ross’ music seems to reflect Thomas’ grasp of nostalgia, finding warmth, but mostly in minor keys.
Thomas’ love of the everyday always seemed present, the cast able to ‘live’ the words. A sketch involving the local postman was given the boost of a hilarious Welsh song and dance routine before a first shard of mortality tinted the boisterousness, the postman’s passing suggested with his face fading behind a window.
On then to Christmas, large balloons bumping from stage to audience and back, the cast’s energy and sense of fun obvious. Aged ‘uncles’ given grunts as they sit down to play.
And then, suddenly, it is over. Robyn Sinclair’s soulful delivery of the song ‘My Poor Sad Heart’ wets many a cheek as the house opens one last time to reveal a ‘shrine’ to Thomas, his young face looking out at us from the back wall, his words still propelling our imaginations.
★★★★★ Simon Bishop, 28 November 2025
Photo credit: Steve Tanner
