Notions of reality might seem an unusual topic for a bestselling children’s story but that’s what made Margery Williams fame and fortune with her bestseller The Velveteen Rabbit. Now the charming adaptation of the work written in the early twentieth century has come to the Lyric Theatre as a co-production with Replay Theatre in the 2025 children’s festival.
The setting is the nursery, so a period detail, where the little boy, or Wee Man as this is now set in Belfast in the 80s, owns a host of toys over which he exercises a benign despotism. And the way for them to become real is via his love. Sleepy Ted is his favourite until he’s lost, then it’s the toy rabbits turn. How is velveteen different from velvet, it’s not so posh we learn in Jan Carson’s imaginative reworking. Duke Special has written lovely songs, as this is a musical, and the early wistful number Nobody gets to be real sets the tone and is a kind of leitmotif through the show.
As the boy, Tara Wilkes acts her socks off but you slightly wonder whether a young boy would have done equally well in the main role. There are longueurs in the beginning as we wonder what’s going to happen next but Jack in the Box (Darren Franklin) brightens and coarsens things nicely. There are humorous passages, especially around Christmas when the toys fear an influx of new competitors.. Other toys include Robbo the robot, a star turn from Rosie Barry, whose pride at her aluminium durability means, as is pointed out, a slimmer chance of being despatched to the D.U.M.P. She also brings real sparkle to the naughty but nice Nursery Magic Fairy later on.
The story unfolds well although not so darkly as the original when after scarlet fever, the little boy’s toys are burnt. Here he gets a contagious, bad bug and they’re potentially consigned to the washing machine (dangers of shrinkage) or the dump. But Velveteen Rabbit, who is engagingly portrayed by Jack Watson, has a chance of joining the real rabbits out of doors. He shillies and shallies, wondering if it will hurt, but real life is also depicted as wonderful when you frolic with the creatures on the grass, run and jump with ease not when you’re thrown in the air. The show was nicely directed by Janice Kernoghan-Reid.
This is a classic retelling of a classic children’s tale with a decent message and worth taking the kids to.
Jane Hardy
