BWW Reviews: THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS, Chickenshed, December 5 2015

For many, Chickenshed's Christmas extravaganza is circled on the calendar long before the clocks have gone back - indeed, many return to sit in the stalls having been on the other side of the fourth wall as kids or students in shows long gone. The cavernous space in North London remains a symbol of a more innocent, better world than the one we see in news broadcasts or feel when jostling through Christmas shoppers eager to acquire yet more stuff to fill lives already too busy with other stuff.

This year's production is The Twelve Days Of Christmas (at Chickenshed until 9 January) which follows four children as they seek the fifth ring to complete a magical quintet of gold. En route, guided by two turtle doves (who aren't quite whom they appear to be), they meet the villainous four calling birds, but get plenty of help from (amongst the familiar groups), eleven plumbers (pipers - geddit?) before the rings work their Christmas miracle.

If it's not quite as slick as previous Christmas productions, it's still a lot of fun, with Chickenshed's signature inclusivity and Aida-like cast of hundreds flooding the stage with humanity. There's plenty of good songs, sung wonderfully well by the principal actors, with Sarah Connolly a standout, and there's some fine japery from three not so very French hens.

In the matinee I attended, there were at least as many kids in the house as adults but, with no special effects, no forced audience participation and no 3D video segments to amaze them, the kids sat, their eyes fixed on the fate of the four children journeying through this land filled with strange people, and they watched the full two hours with barely a murmur, just applause where appropriate and a riotous reception for the cast at the curtain.

For most of the kids clapping wildly, they'll just consider it a great afternoon out - as it is - but for them, and for the kids on stage too, the show will work on their subconscious minds as an exemplar of a world where difference is embraced and celebrated, where co-operation beats competition, where one does one's bit to help and not to hinder. Those lessons will come out somewhere in their futures - and, heaven knows, they'll be needed. It's impossible to come away from Chickenshed with anything other than a rosier view of the world - perhaps the very best secular interpretation of Christmas's religious message.

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