Awful Auntie – Darlington Hippodrome

Writer: David Walliams

Adapter and Director: Neal Foster

Co-Director: Richard J Hinds

The clue to the content of this show is definitely in the title. The Auntie here is indeed awful, brilliantly so. Also horrible and mad and silly and basically a murderer. This is not a tale for the faint of heart. One of David Walliams’s darker novels, the plot revolves around almost 13 year old Lady Stella Saxby whose parents were killed in a mysterious car crash. She wakes up from a coma to find herself head to toe in bandages and at the mercy of her Aunt Alberta, who has been feeding her mushed up bugs to sustain her.

Quickly recognising that her aunt is both bonkers and power mad, Stella realises she must escape in order to save her own life and the deeds of Saxby Hall. Along the way she meets Soot, the ghost of a chimney sweep who suffocated at the hall years before.

Neal Foster both directs and plays Aunt Alberta with great skill, lurching brilliantly between comedy and menace, revealing her crazed ways and unhealthy obsession with both tiddlywinks and owls with glee.Alberta’s own (mostly) faithful owl Wagner is an unexpected delight – Emily Essery is an excellent Puppeteer, working with puppets of two different sizes as well as a huge rod used Lion King style to swoop Wagner out into the audience.

Annie Cordoni is extremely likeable as Stella Saxby, the ‘posho’ wrapped in cotton wool who provides a brilliant contrast to Matthew Allen’s Soot – a Cockney full of rhyming slang and fart jokes. These two form a great bond and the fun they are having as they hurtle around the ever-moving set (superbly designed by Jacqueline Trousdale) is very believable. Even when Cordoni had a repeated slight wardrobe/wire malfunction, she managed to deal with it well and did not miss a beat in her to-ing and fro-ing with Allen.

A clear favourite with the younger members of the audience is Gibbon the Butler (Zain Abrahams) who gives his slapstick all in every scene. From mouse catching with a giant net to trying to roast a live chicken in a car engine, Abrahams provides some light relief, which is much needed for the parents more than the children, who seem unperturbed by Alberta’s mad cackle, the odd The Shining reference and repeated tendencies to electrocute her niece.

The music and sound effects are spot on in terms of timing, but often the music is very loud and somewhat overpowering – in the first scene there is some underscoring, but it is so loud that it feels as if the characters should break into song.

The show may even benefit from the odd song or two, on occasion the scenes feel short and no sooner do the characters arrive in one part of the hall do they dash off to another, occasionally leaving the audience unsure of what has just occurred.

In essence this is a clever adaptation of the book, that uses puppetry and lighting to particularly good effect – Walliams fans should love it, but there is also a lot to engage those who have no acquaintance with the books.

Runs until 14th July.