The Snowman & The Roxy Disaster

Yesterday evening saw a trip to see 'The Snowman' at the Peacock Theatre, the stage version of the animated film. Now, I expected some children to be there, but not many, that's what matinees are for, in'it? I like to see children enjoying the magic of Christmas, I go all paternal and go 'aahh' a lot. But not when I'm surrounded by 'em in the confines of a theatre and they're all under the age of 7. I grinned and bore it. Mostly.

My eyes lit up to see a merch stand selling tat but not just any old tat, this was Snowman tat and a lot of it lit up bright blue or green when you pressed buttons, so that makes it proper tat. And there was a join the dots game in the programme and pictures to colour in and when you get it home there's a little stage and characters to cut out (with an adult's help, of course) so you can recreate the event yourself. Wow, I'm breathless with excitement.

The production itself was ok but seemed to have lots of padding. I kept wondering why the Snowman and his snowchums all had furry costumes that made them look more like polar bears than snowpeople. But that's a detail I totally forgot when the Snowman and the boy went flying! They really did fly, too, it was magic.

My favourite snowperson was the snowscottishman (I know he was a man cos he wore a kilt) who nutted Jack Frost when he was bugging the snow princess. No stereotyping there, then. It was so unexpected that I couldn't help but laugh out loud and then glanced around furtively to check whether I was being a bad influence on the children. I also liked Jack Frost's jacket which was very glam rock.

My least favourite people were the ballerinas. Why do things like this always have to have a pretty young lady ballerina in them? What's that about? There were two in this production. Yawn. Give me a mad snowscottishperson any day. And Santa Claus wasn't very convincing (I suspect he was played by the same person who played a rather camp pineapple earlier in the production). He was obviously a thin person under the padding and didn't move right. I wasn't impressed by the beard.

O, and just in case you haven't seen the cartoon, the Snowman ends up as a puddle but the little boy doesn't seem to care because he finds a scarf in his pocket from Santa Claus. What a bummer. What message does that send to all the wee 'uns?

I got home and finished wrapping presents to post (today is last parcel posting day) when disaster struck - timmmmberrrrr and down comes my lovely Christmas Tree. Luckily I hadn't put too many ornaments on the tree yet, but two glass baubles shatter, including Roxy...

Roxy came home with me two years ago after seeing the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular in New York. Roxy was a Rockette and she sat on a nice red bauble, smiling and looking very professional waiting her turn to high kick. Roxy no longer has a bauble to sit on.

I have fond memories of that trip to New York and to Radio City and those were partly invested in that Christmas Tree decoration. After being initially despondent about it's loss I realised I still had Roxy and she doesn't need a bauble to make her a star. She's a real trooper and plastered that smile back on her face, eyes shining in the light and got back on that tree - no mere disaster's going to make her miss the once a year show! Good on ya Roxy!

Here's a photo of Roxy in younger days sitting proudly on her bauble. What a star!