Tiny meek mouse plays it big when the going gets gruff

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This article was published 26/03/2025 (495 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Mouse? Well, in this case, cross off the Gruffalo’s Child’s name for daring to stare down the resourceful rodent during Manitoba Theatre for Young People’s charming 2025 stage adaptation of British author Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo’s Child.

Performed by London, U.K.-based Tall Stories Theatre Company, the touring show that closes Sunday features a crackerjack cast comprised of Yvette Clutterbuck (Gruffalo’s Child), Laura Dowsett (Mouse) and Billy McCleary (Gruffalo/Snake/Owl/Fox).

Director Olivia Jacobs, who also helmed MTYP’s production of The Gruffalo in 2023, once again infuses the 55-minute musical with gentle warmth and often side-splitting humour that appeals to kids of all ages.

In the sequel to The Gruffalo, her beloved 1999 children’s picture book illustrated by Axel Scheffler, Donaldson flips the original narrative to tell its “brains over brawn” story about might — and fright — from the shaggy monsters’s point of view.

After the Gruffalo falls asleep, his bored daughter impulsively slips out of the familial cave to find that “terrifying, horrific Mouse” her father has been warning her about as a cautionary tale.

After stumbling across a Snake, Owl and Fox in the “deep dark wood,” the tiny Mouse — who also nips in and out as the show’s narrator — tricks the Gruffalo’s Child into believing she’s more fearsome than she seems.

Her quick-witted plan to save her own fur underscores the show’s potent theme that size — or even species — doesn’t matter, if you’re able to harness the power of your imagination to overcome whatever life throws at you.

It’s a relatively simple, kid- and adult-friendly premise, brought to life through crisply directed dialogue, song (including the cast’s fine three-part harmonies of John Fiber and Andy Shaw’s music/lyrics), dance and mime.

Bountiful audience participation kept even the wriggliest of audience members fully engaged during Sunday’s matinee.

Donaldson’s deliciously lilting, rhyming couplets, which kids adore, are used as a device to link scenes together.

A minor quibble is that lines sometimes became obfuscated by the actors’ lighting-speed delivery, as well as by their British accents, which are not always immediately understandable to Prairie ears (though it’s grand hearing so many “jolly good”s uttered onstage).

However, what makes this musical sing are the spot-on characterizations, beginning with Clutterbuck’s animated title character, strong-willed and wondering, who embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

One can’t help but fall in love with her plucky courage, accompanied by her “Stick Man” doll to ward off danger. Among the show’s earliest musical delights is a tune sung to her woody sidekick: “If you stick with me, I will stick with you.” Its subsequent reprises help mark the passage of time and add cohesive glue to the narrative.

Dowsett crafts a suitably twitchy, squeaky Mouse who propels the plot forward, capturing both the fragility of her tiny woodland creature and glee as she ultimately outwits the Gruffalo’s Child by casting her larger-than life shadow across the glowing full moon.

McCleary’s chameleonic morphing through his stable of anthropomorphic characters — including his grumpy, growling Gruffalo — is pure magic, each snapping with personality and carefully crafted with distinct physical mannerisms and vocal inflection.

Snake, portrayed as a party animal, er, reptile, sashays about the stage in a party hat and scaly tailcoat, luring the Gruffalo’s Child with rap tunes and Morag Cross’s jazzy choreography, before inviting audience members to shout out their real-life names as “party guests” (they do).

His bespectacled Owl, clad in a quintessentially English wool cardigan, presents as flying instructor. However, perhaps the actor’s most colourful character of all is Fox, a vainglorious, fast-talking salesman who belts out, “I could sell the sunshine, and the stars that twinkle in the night sky,” a line that serves as a reminder that, amidst all the goofy tomfoolery, poetry is only a breath away.

The story ends gently, as the Gruffalo’s Child returns home to her snoring father, still tucked into designer Isla Shaw’s tour-friendly set, which includes hollowed-out trees strategically rotated at key moments.

The newly empowered Mouse sings a refrain of the Gruffalo’s earlier lullaby to her, a sweetly tender moment in which all lines between predator and prey blur and melt away, through understanding, empathy and song.

holly.harris@shaw.ca