Charles Hutchinson reviews Fungus The Bogeyman

12:51pm Thursday 20th March 2008

THE luminous green programme is printed in recycled paper, a decision typical of Marcus Romer's funky and fun, earthy but sharply aware new staging of Raymond Briggs's cult children's story.

Romer adapted the tale of the "punk Wombles" for the Christmas show at ArtsDepot in Barnet in a co-production with Pilot Theatre.

Now, green-conscious chap that he is, Romer is recycling the musical play around the country, starting on Pilot's home soil of York Theatre Royal.

Suitable for four years olds and upwards, Romer's production has retained all of its holiday spirit for the tour.

You won't find this many bum, wind and, yes, bogey jokes outside one of Nick Lane's anarchic fairy tales in York and Hull.

It is still Raymond Briggs, but maybe not quite as we know it from the 1977 book, written at the height of punk - Johnny Rotten's green mien and all - which seems to have influenced the Mohican spikes still sported by Fungus (the ever loveable Eamonn Fleming), wife Mildew (Joanna Swain) and their son Mould (Michael Lambourne).

Romer and his designer, Ali Allen, have retained the distinctive red brush of hair and big green ears in characterful face masks, while introducing modernity. Rather than merely recycling Briggs's book, this show has mobile phones that break wind as a ring tone; car alarms that flash on and off; and a Drycleaner character in Maxine (pocket rocket Ebony Feare) who speaks in the rap-influenced street rhythm that has spread through EastEnders, innit.

The slime-splattered set is up-to-the minute too, using gauze for video imagery that allow a giant pipe to snake its way from the Bogey underground of lovingly maintained grime to Up Top, where Maxine lives with her housework-obsessed Drycleaner mum, Miriam (Melody Brown, once of Tang Hall).

Rhiannon Meades's narrator with the Welsh lilt and the accordion chivvies along the story of Mould and Maxine and their parents learning to appreciate their differences when they venture into each other's world. You will have the slime of your life at this fabulous show, where Romer's actor-musicians bogey on down with the soul of Motown and the power of Broadway musicals.

• Fungus The Bogeyman, Pilot Theatre, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, box office 01904 623568; West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, May 28 to 31, tel 0113 213 7700.

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