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The Jabberwocky (UCLU Runaground)

By Sarah Murphy | Published on Thursday 20 August 2015

‘The Jabberwocky’ is a brillig modern re-imagining of Carroll’s beloved nonsense poem, gently nudging at issues of single parenthood and bereavement. A truly dreamy design, all bunting and origami birds, with the ingenious shadow puppetry projections making things crisp and cinematic. Under fives were CBeebies-charmed from the start, while parents were humoured with some metatextual jokes (“We can’t tell you what happens next!” chant the trash trolls, “That would ruin the narrative structure!”). Elements of the macabre, namely the haunting of our hero by a puppet projection of himself, had more echoes of ‘Coraline’ than ‘Alice’, maybe? But I found myself tensing as the eponymous beast finally appeared, in all its papier mâché glory, complete with some whiffling and burbling vocal pyrotechnics.

Zoo, until 22 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Sarah Murphy]