"Winnie The Pooh - The Musical"

Nottingham Theatre Royal.

This new re-working of A.A. Milne's most famous little bear, Winnie The Pooh, and his friends, Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga, Roo and of course Tigger, takes me back to my childhood, as I expect every parent who sees this show will attest to. They are characters who have played such a big part in almost everyone's childhood.

A grand puppet fest, controlled by a wonderful group of puppeteers, Benjamin Durham, Alex Cardall, Lottie Grogan, Robbie Noonan, Chloe Gentles, Harry Boyd and Laura Bacon who swiftly, in my eyes, disappeared from view as I concentrated on Pooh and his friends down in the Hundred Acre Wood. A mark of a good puppeteer is when you don't notice that they are there. The puppets themselves are rather marvellous; you just want to give all of them a cuddle and a squidge.

Christopher Robin even makes a couple of appearances, in between his schooling.

The hour-long stage play is a collection of short stories amassed to make up the hour, seamlessly segued from one story to the next.

What the set shows is the natural annual landscape of the wood, working its' way through the four seasons. The set is quite impressive with flowers blooming for Spring through to Winter snow with a "magical" stream which carried the pooh sticks under the bridge and across the stage. We also had the tree where Pooh got stuck in when searching for hunny, sorry honey. There was also Rabbit's garden complete with carrots that leapt out of the ground.

Accompanying the modern narrative is an original score by Nate Edmondson, featuring some of the Grammy award-winning songs written by the Sherman Brothers for the original animated features, including "Winnie the Pooh", "The Blustery Day", "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" and "Whoop-De-Dooper Bounce", which went down a storm with the kids in the audience, plus A.A. Milne’s "The More It Snows" and "Sing Ho" with a new arrangement.

All in all this is quite magical to see. A band of puppeteers, who managed to create the voices and made them sound like the ones I remembered from the Disney films, as well as create the character's movements, as per the films. Not only were they in charge of the main characters but there were bees and birds and snowflakes to manage.

The show only lasts an hour, without an interval, so not too long to keep the young ones occupied. For many children, this could be their first introduction to the theatre, so if they enjoyed the magic of puppetry, there's every chance that their parents will bring them back to see other productions; this could be the start of a love for the stage, and who knows where that could lead?

And I also noticed that there were quite a few adults who were just as enchanted in seeing these cuddly, larger than life characters on stage, giving them a chance to relive their childhood literature.

"Winnie The Pooh - The Musical" is at the Nottingham Theatre Royal until Saturday with shows on Thursday at 1pm, Friday at 10.30am & 2pm and Saturday at 11am, 2pm & 5pm.