Focus Birmingham

By Vidar Hjardeng

Last Friday was particularly cold and some were even expecting the odd snowflake, so an appropriate time to go and enjoy one of the Birmingham Rep’s 2 audio described productions that day of the enchanting, The Snowman - based on the book by Raymond Briggs, with music and lyrics by Howard Blake featuring the classic Walking in the Air. This is the story of the adventures of an 8 year old boy and his nocturnal visit to the North Pole, with the eponymous Snowman.

Throughout the one hour 15 minutes of onstage action, none of the extensive cast says a single word, so for any visually impaired person, like myself, to get anything out of it – audio description is an absolute must, and Janet Jackson and Julia Grundy more or less ended up telling the story through their detailed commentary, describing the lad and his new friend’s flight to the North Pole, and the fun that the he and the Snowman have meeting Father Christmas, the Ice Princess, Jack Frost, the other Snowmen and an array of animals. In fact most of the second half takes place here with a lot of lively dancing featuring all these appealing characters.

For the matinee touch tour, over 30 visually impaired children were taken onstage to be shown the boy’s house and some of the props, including the motor bike and sidecar which took the Snowman and the boy around the garden in the first half: I believe many a photo was taken of this with some VIPs helped by theatre staff and volunteer, Vicky, able to clamber on-board .. one for the family album! I was fortunate enough, once again, to receive a CD of the pre-show notes in the post a couple of days before the performance, so I had time to digest details of a particularly large cast, their costumes and their characters – in fact many of them played more than one role. It was also really useful to have this information reprised ‘live’ 15 minutes before curtain-up, when we were reminded of the set with its Snow-dome effect and the appearance of snowflakes falling on the stage. Directed by Bill Alexander and with the boy played, on this occasion, by Lewis Coppen it was another magical performance and even though the music is very worth listening to performed ‘live’ by the orchestra, without Julia and Janet’s excellent audio description, I, for one, would have got very little out of the actual stage show.

The next audio-described production at the Birmingham Rep is perhaps more for grown-ups, Dancing at Lughnasa on the evening of 4 March and tickets and Touch Tour/headset information, can be obtained from the Box Office in the usual way (0121 236 4455).