Charles Hutchinson reviews Wind In The Willows presented by the Ratatat Theatre Company (From York Press)

Charles Hutchinson reviews Wind In The Willows presented by the Ratatat Theatre Company

2:14pm Friday 9th July 2010 in

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Not to be confused with the imminent big summer production on York Theatre Royal’s specially reconfigured stage, this is one of those back-of-the-van touring shows that keeps the arts alive in the outer reaches.

If it is Thursday it must be Terrington Village Hall, where Ryedale company Ratatat has already played to 120 children in the afternoon. No time to rest on a hot, sticky day, inside hot, sticky costumes – a wool gilet for Ratty, a thick waistcoat and later a scarf for Toad – means the indefatigable Dominic Goodwin and his fellow actors are exuberantly greeting the early-evening audience like old friends (which indeed many are), selling raffle tickets and establishing their characters before show time.

The fourth wall broken down, Goodwin’s ever-hearty party animal Toad, Stephanie Preacher’s keyboard-playing Mole, George Neville’s river-captain Ratty and Sarah Kurth’s delightfully flat-vowel West Yorkshire Deazley the Weasel set about telling director Martin Riley’s brisk stage adaptation with gusto.

What, no Badger, you say? Wrong, Kurth dons a duffle-coat with white stripes on the hood to portray the stern fellow, while Riley’s powers of description enable her to create the sense of plenty of stoats and weasels in the Wild Woods.

Daniel Bowater’s jolly boating songs, nutty audience participation and the canny use of the simple set, costumes and mime, rather than props, all add to the fun of this lively, lovely staging of Kenneth Grahame’s timeless story.

Wind In The Willows, Ratatat Theatre Company, on tour until July 31.

For tour dates and performance times, including Galtres Centre, Easingwold, today and tomorrow; Pocklington Arts Centre, July 14, Kirkbymoorside Village Hall, July 27 and 28, and Ripley Town Hall, July 30, visit ratatattheatre.co.uk