Five Go on an Adventure – Pumphouse Theatre, 29 June 2024: Review

Five Go on an Adventure is one of the many worlds of Enid Blyton adapted to live theatre, which reconciles an idyllic world of children overcoming worldly difficulties with a mix of innocence and wily wisdom.

From the Tim Bray Theatre Company, the leading organisation for children’s theatre in New Zealand.

Tim Bray QSM has adapted and directed this theatre production from Five Go on a Hike Together (1951). Which has elements of other stories as he read all 21 books to piece together this version.

Having read most of them myself growing up, this play was foremost a delightful nostalgia trip for a late Boomer.

The first was published in 1942 and the last in 1963. As children we started with Noddy, Big Ears, Mr Plod and Gollywog (a favourite even if he was a bit of a villain), then progressed to the books.

They resonated for children as the setting was the playground of the countryside. Moors, hedges, cottages, country lanes, vast coastlines.

A constant feature of these stories are large amounts of healthy food. Blyton was a teenager when the Great War broke out, and she was in her forties when the bigger one started. She lived through times of austerity, food shortages and rationing.

This did not stop in Britain until the late Fifties. It had left an indelible impression in her oeuvre.

For the grandparents and parents here, we are reacquainted with the Famous Five. The children here are just delighted, as they are extraordinarily quiet for the hour.

We meet the oldest, Julian (Jesse Park). The leader, sometimes a little bossy as he takes charge of their adventures.

Dick (Kazim Khan) is his younger brother who is boisterous and rambunctious. Anne (Izzy Creemers) is the sister and the youngest, protected and comforted by the others as needed.

George (Danielle Nicholson) is actually Georgina, the others first cousin. She is a tomboy, and she wants to be thought of as a boy. This seems to be prescient now, but it wasn’t like that at all.

There was gender fluidity in the imagination of children which was perfectly innocent. It still is despite the current weaponised hysteria.

The fifth member is Timmy the scruffy dog, Georges pet, who is operated by puppeteer Thomas Treymane.

Dogs are overtly affectionate and fawning. Blyton wrote his character as fully anthropomorphised. One of her passions was animal welfare.

It is school holiday time for the gang. They are going to hike across the countryside alone, both parents otherwise occupied.

In our childhood it was see you I’m off in the morning, and only come back at dinnertime. Helicopter parenting was unknown.

A stand-out feature is the pacing and timing of the narrative. The story is plot-driven involving a heist, stashed treasure with criminal elements.

Somehow the adaptation has managed to give plenty of space for the narrative to unfold, without cluttering it with too much dialogue.

In this way it retains genuine suspense, along with plenty of humour, overt and subtle.

The set features a portable cottage which is an inn, café and farmhouse. A lake is conjured up by two rafts which float on small wheels.

A clever use of a relatively small stage to appear expansive.

One of the many criticisms of Blyton was that she was nostalgic and too optimistic. A surprising thing is that this cancel culture was active in the early Thirties, and it has continued since.

Let’s try and counter that by pointing out the similarities to Orwell’s Animal Farm. This was published in 1945, and it had considerable success. Orwell considered it his masterpiece. He then took four years to write Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Tale. This was dropped after the first edition.

Both writers were seeing beyond the grim reality of appearance to the underlying human nature. Which is benevolent and protective when facing adversity.

Children can read both the Famous Five series and Animal Farm and get the same message. They would see the humour in the pigs.

Five Go on an Adventure, with its skilful adaptation and direction is another triumph for the Tim Bray Theatre Company.

Photographs courtesy of David Rowland