Lauren Crisp is a book editor, writer and keen follower of arts and culture. Born and raised in Harrogate, Lauren recently moved back to North Yorkshire after a stint in London, where she regularly reviewed theatre – everything from big West End shows to small fringe productions. She is now eager to explore the culture on offer in and around her home town.  You can contact Lauren on laurencrispwriter@gmail.com. 

Leeds Playhouse’s festive season kicks off with family favourite Oliver!, and it’s a real Christmas treat. 

Set and Costume Designer Colin Richmond creates a Dickensian masterpiece of the Playhouse’s vast Quarry space. His Victorian London is gloomy, grimy and shadowy, where candle-lit lamps illuminate the night and ash falls from a smog-laden sky. 

The production is staged in the round, with audience members observing the action from all angles. Additional staging, featuring stairways and platforms, surrounds and spans the main set, with characters departing the stage to appear suddenly elsewhere, creating the feel of a hustling, bustling metropolis, where anyone could be hiding around the corner. 

Direction and choreography are flawlessly orchestrated to ensure all audience members, regardless of their seat, feel present and part of this world. Costume and props are also splendidly immersive, and swaps are seamlessly integrated. 

The production is made complete by its huge cast, many of whom, naturally, are youngsters, chosen for their parts via an open call-out across the north, and whose talent and commitment shine. 

The roles of Oliver and The Artful Dodger are each shared by three young actors over the course of the run; on Friday, 9-year-old Nicholas Teixeira took on the titular role with ease, delivering an adroit rendition of Where is Love? to pull many a heartstring. Felix Holt’s Dodger is as Dickens intended: a boy old before his time. Holt has a natural comedic swagger that will undoubtedly take him far.

As for the grown-ups: Steve Furst makes for a memorable and multidimensional Fagin, his wickedness and greed mingling with fleeting displays of kindliness for his young criminal apprentices. Chris Bennett’s Bill Sikes, meanwhile, shows not a shred of humanity and may be the fiercest iteration of one of fiction’s most vicious antagonists that I have ever seen. 

And there is, of course, tune after glorious tune, all familiar, but all elevated by Lucy Hind’s exciting choreography. I loved That’s Your Funeral, led by the marvellously macabre undertakers under whose care Oliver briefly finds himself, and Consider Yourself, a musical lover’s dream with its dazzling, full-cast, high-octane performance.  

I’d do anything to encourage you to catch this impeccably produced Christmas spectacular at Leeds Playhouse, running until 27 January 2024.  

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Lauren Crisp is a book editor, writer and keen follower of arts and culture. Born and raised in Harrogate, Lauren recently moved back to North Yorkshire after a stint in London, where she regularly reviewed theatre – everything from big West End shows to small fringe productions. She is now eager to explore the culture on offer in and around her home town.  You can contact Lauren on laurencrispwriter@gmail.com 

Based on Sophie Anderson’s children’s novel, The House with Chicken Legs has been enchantingly adapted for stage by award-winning theatre company Les Enfants Terribles. The production, currently at Leeds Playhouse as part of a tour across the country, brings the author’s imaginative, dreamy tale to dazzling life and is a resplendent feast for the eyes.

The story, rooted in Slavic folklore, follows 12-year-old Marinka, whose house has legs (specifically, chicken legs) and a mind of its own, taking off to far-flung corners of the universe at a moment’s notice. Marinka’s grandmother is a spirit guide who ushers the dead from this world to the next so that they may sit amongst the stars, and is teaching her granddaughter to one day do the same. The only problem is that Marinka, young and full of life, wants to forge her own destiny in the world of the living.

The production’s fast-paced narrative is at once energetic and emotionally charged, alive with the wonders of storytelling, seamlessly transporting its audience to other worlds entirely, with a compelling blend of stage action, set changes, music, puppetry and mesmerising animation. Creative and beautiful, this is true escapism.

Image © Rah Petherbridge

The play’s music is spellbinding, with a captivating score by Alexander Wolfe that journeys from New Orleans to Eastern Europe, to the stars and beyond. Every song serves a purpose (often not the case in a musical adaptation), all accompanied by instruments played by the actors themselves – everything from flute to accordion, saxophone to electric guitar – proving themselves truly multi-talented.

Ultimately, this is a tale of life and death, but one which deals with matters of the afterlife with wisdom and warmth. Anderson notes that in her novel she was eager to “help children see death in a more positive way, as the circle of life”. The stage version delivers on this brief, transforming the narrative of grief into a bright, happy and moving celebration of life.

It is worth stressing that this is not just a play for youngsters; whilst the piece treads delicately on the macabre and the darker questions, audience members of all ages will fall under its spell.  This is magic on stage; and yes, chicken legs do feature. You’ll have to see it to believe it.

The House with Chicken Legs is on at the Leeds Playhouse until September 16. 

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