WHEN Tigger and Christmas play Rabbit And Hedgehog, you know it must be a show for children, and in this case a 45-minute performance for three-year-olds and upwards.

Cheryl "Tigger" Blaize and Ashley Christmas team up with abundant joy in Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster's adaptation of Paul Stewart and co-writer and illustrator Chris Riddell's enchanting books.

Forster has picked two stories, The Birthday Presents and Rabbit's Wish, the one leading seamlessly into the other.

Blaize's restless Rabbit bounds on stage first, upright and twitching, bouncing up and down the steps on Sophie Phillips's picture-book set of a tree with a burrow entrance and, off to the side, Hedgehog's bramble-patch sleeping quarters.

Rabbit at first wears a hood with big ears to scratch, but once we acclimatise to Blaize's facial mannerisms, the hood is pulled back, and we see Blaize's full head, choirboy haircut and all.

The same applies to Christmas's Hedgehog, who emerges on all fours beneath a spiked rug coat that covers both back and head. Hedgehog takes to two feet and, again, the headwear is removed to reveal the maximum facial expression and spiked hair.

Characterisation through movement and voice and contrast in size is established as quickly as the camaraderie and audience rapport, the children in half-term week soon being encouraged to make suggestions to help Rabbit And Hedgehog celebrate their birthday.

Gentle humour too is to the fore in their unusual presents for each other: bottled moonlight for Rabbit and a box of cosiness for Hedgehog. It is the thought that counts!

Where the Tortoise and the Hare are divided by a different pace of life, here the division rests on Rabbit being a creature of the day and Hedgehog, a nocturnal forager (or noc-noc-nocturnal as Guy Picot's rhythmical lyric to Chris Madin's music puts it).

The two friends can spend only a short time together each day, hence Rabbit's wish that Hedgehog could play all day in the second story, where the two selfless animals look to save each other from floodwater depicted by blue streamers.

The imaginative power of play, the joy of friendship and the appreciation of others all come through in a lovely, lively show that ends aptly with stars twinkling.


Box office: 01904 623568.