Stig of the Dump review

Jessica Swale’s live version of Clive King’s children’s favourite Stig of the Dump was a hit with young audiences at Grosvenor Park in Chester six years ago.

You may well think ’If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, but Swale – encouraged by director Harry Jardine – has revisited and revised the tale of loneliness, communication, family and friendship to create something that’s intriguing, exuberant and quite different from its earlier incarnation. 

Both Barney (Mia Ward), the story’s lonely young hero, and Stig (Alex Nowak), the caveman he befriends at the titular dump, are reimagined as deaf characters, adding another dimension to Barney’s solitary predicament.

The show, playing in open-air rep throughout August, builds on Storyhouse’s commitment to accessibility, which began with its signed production of Antigone last autumn.

Signing in various forms is integrated with speech to create a bilingual production, and it feels very naturally done. While D/deaf actors Ward and Nowak impress as the engine room of the piece, British Sign Language interpreter Laura Goulden is a key player both in the gang of urchins who fight with and eventually befriend Barney and among the burglars who filch a suitcase of valuables from his grandparents.

Nearly all the cast members use sign language to one extent or another, fluently in the case of Haylie Jones, who has a D/deaf sibling in real life and plays Barney’s big sister Lou with a convincing mixture of sympathy and frustration. A particularly intense, emotional scene in the closing minutes is signed between brother and sister. 

The interaction between Barney and Stig as they find their own way of communicating is charming, although it’s not always easy to follow them while they’re attempting to find common ground through different sign languages. 

Elsewhere the story is energetically delivered and busy, filled with entertaining, larger-than-life performances, not least from Goulden, Oliver Nazareth Aston and Eddy Payne as a knockabout, light-fingered Three Stooges.

While the style is likely to appeal to youngsters brought up on Mr Tumble, the show also has a palpably imaginative 1970s make-your-own-entertainment vibe – particularly resonant with those of us who ‘played out’ (sometimes on waste ground or building sites) during the decade. 

But there’s a fine line – crossed now and again – between ebullience and scrappiness, and while the show is a trim two hours, at times the action still feels as though it needs to be moved along with more focus. 

Musical director Francis Tucker, formerly the drumming dame in the Liverpool Everyman rock’n’roll panto, has created a thrumming, humming soundscape played by a ’junk yard’ band on violin, guitar, triangle and various containers. So, while the dialogue may sometimes be silent, the production itself is joyfully noisy.