© Asya Verzhbinsky 'Wind In The Willows' reviews Hart in reviews Cooper in reviews more Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

The majority of footprints are taloned or furry in his sensitive recreation of Kenneth Grahame's shamelessly anthropomorphic but irresistible fantasy of the riverside adventures of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad. The action starts in Grahame's dusty attic, among bits of tatty furniture and a broken rocking horse all of which serve as caravans, courtrooms and prison cells in the Quay Brothers's ingenious designs.

Former Royal Ballet director, Anthony Dowell, is Grahame in Elgar-ish tweedy suit with turned up trouser bottoms and reciting Poet Laureate Andrew Motion's rhyming narrative. Mole is discovered in a rolled up old carpet, she finds a stretch of silk that handily turns out to be a stream and the evening is launched on a tide of middle class poetry and kitsch "English" style music (by Martin Ward after Edwardian composer George Butterworth). But it works.

Matthew Hart's Toad in The Wind In The Willows
Photograph by Asya Verzhbinsky ©

Tuckett and costume designer Nicky Gillibrand rigorously spurn the cute in favour of characterisation: face paint and wobbly whiskers are kept to the minimum. Homely cardigans and comfortable jackets provide realistic imaging leaving a blank canvas upon which the dancers' artistry conjures the living creatures. Even with his dinghy and oars wrapped around his midriff, Will Kemp's Ratty has a manly swagger with a dash of the saturnine purportedly fatally attractive to women and Philippa Gordon's Mole duly succumbs. Written in the book as two males, Tuckett makes them a Darby and Joan couple in his telling of a fairy story for children of all ages while thankfully avoiding a full frontal justification.

Adam Cooper's Badger is the grumpy paterfamilias, enjoying his grumbles as much as his pipe, but the hit of the evening is Matthew Hart's Toad. In the grip of one magnificent obsession after the other, Hart is a lunatic in mustard coloured knickerbockers and red velvet waistcoat, tongue protruding, eyes popping and utterly lovable. He is a gibbering menace in his car (proved conclusively during the interval) and an accomplished heartstring puller when incarcerated behind his giant kitchen chair bars. Tuckett dices with the worst possible taste when he stages Toad's dalliance with Luke Heydon's Gaoler's Daughter, but creates a Keystone Kop chase worthy of any pantomime.

Adam Cooper as Badger in The Wind In The Willows
Photograph by Asya Verzhbinsky ©

The Wild Wood weasels and stoats are gruesomely cheerful punk rockers and even the singing ducks are gorgeous. The final battle for Toad Hall with Badger's blunderbuss, wooden swords and Ratty's pistol is satisfyingly full of bumps and bangs from the on stage orchestra and needless to say everyone lives happily ever after. Tuckett has created a children's show with the high artistic mastery and sophisticated theatrical skills that any adult can relish and as there are only 2 performances today and five more later this week kill for a ticket.