The Lorax, Old Vic, theatre review: This is terrifically inventive

The tones here range from the infectious verve of tongue-twisty nonsensical-sounding good sense to the hauntingly lyrical

Ben Thompson (Manuel Harlan)

“Oh reason not the Thneed, ”as King Lear very nearly said. A “Thneed” is a tangle of woolly tatters that looks as if a cowardly would-be poncho – knitted in the last throes of St Vitus's Dance – has had a quite a tiff with Edward Scissorhands. It's the brainchild of the Onceler. At first, the Onceler is a likeable green-haired chump who has struck out, in order to make it “biggety-big”, from his ambitious but clueless hick family, into the wide world. Draping the pitiful garment in various configurations round his spindly form, he hymns its versatility in hilariously hopeful, hand-to-mouth form: “It's a rug, it's a rag, it's an antimacassar/It's a hanky, a slinky, it's half a cravat...” plus a lot more of where that came from. Alas for the planet, the Thneed requires the top tuft from the palm-like, confectionery-coloured Truffula tree for commercial completeness. And so the hapless Onceler gradually turns into a demagogue-villain of industrialising deforestation, egged on by three gowned and wigged female lawyers who strip off to become a rip-roaring splangly attired Gospel trio urging him on to imperialist megalomania.

I never thought that I would type the words “eco-fable” and “mad, uproarious delight” in the same sentence, especially not with the phrase “for children, in the first instance” bringing up the rear. It's not easy being “green”, as Kermit from Sesame Street pioneeringly intoned. Certainly, I had thought that only a thorough h1-jacking of Little Shop of Horrors, with Audrey and sidekick vegetation suddenly channelling Al Gore could reverse the trend of eco-theatre tending to empty venues. Altogether unanticipated, however, there now arrives this deliriously engaging show, adapted in brilliantly bouncy and mad-with-a-method verse by playwright David Greig from the Dr Seuss cartoon-story and directed in an enchantingly show-biz-knowing but also inspiring and never too wised-up production by Max Webster.

The titular Lorax is a protective tree minder, with an ochre paunch, chicken limbs and an over-abundantly bushy moustache that would be a dead ringer for Nietzsche's if it weren't made of flaxen wool. This creature is manipulated and voiced with great dignity and dexterity by Simon Lipkin. It launches itself bodily with laughter-friendly pluck against the increasingly obdurate and fashionable form of the Onceler. This character is to performed to perfection by Simon Paisley Day who signals beautifully what is ridiculous and then frightening because still in essence sad, lonely and ridiculous in the make-up of our corrupted protagonist.

If the makers of the forlorn wonder.land at the National were to sneak in to get a load of this show, I think they might fling themselves into the Thames for a refreshing reality-check. As it is, the tones here range from the infectious verve of tongue-twisty nonsensical-sounding good sense to the hauntingly lyrical. There are agit-prop fish loopily conveyed to demonstration in buckets and a dying swan in an asymmetrical tequila-sunrise-coloured tute who is distressingly asphyxiated under an enveloping sheet of polythene that represents the smoggy effects of carbon emission. Recommended for all ages, The Lorax combines the joys of making a strong case and making terrifically inventive theatre.