![]() The sea snail is okay when it eventually becomes visible through the smoke although not as amazing as we are led to believe, but the giant lunar moth is quite a disappointment, as it is just a person in a costume with feeble wings attached, hanging from a wire. Others are not so good and look a little like stuffed toys. Some smaller animals that look really good include Gub-Gub the pig, who moves just like a Muppet animal but no longer goes on the voyage, Sheila the fox, Sophie the seal, a duck, a pair of sheep and a lobster. There are some other really good larger animals, including the dancing Pushmi-Pullyu, an elephant and a baby mammoth, plus the two fantastic orang utans that only come on to dance the finale. Jip the old English sheepdog is a full costume containing James Deverell, but this is a long way from Dick Whittington's cat and looks and moves incredibly like a real dog. ![]() Most of those that remain in the show are absolutely wonderful and threaten to steal the show from the humans. The other big stars of the production are the animals, supplied in the original West End production by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Other notable performances come from David Anthony and Joanna Lee Martin who are extremely good as circus owners Alfred and Gertie Blossom, Ako Mitchell is great as Straight Arrow and Halcro Johnston bellows appropriately as bad-tempered magistrate General Bellowes. Joanna Forest, playing Tommy, isn't remotely convincing as a young boy, which is probably more of a reflection on a poor casting decision than on her performance. He has very good support in the excellent Abigail Jaye as love interest Emma Fairfax, and Conor Michael-Sheridan is perfectly fine in his much-reduced role as Matthew Muggins and shows he has a very good voice in the bits of songs he still has left. Tommy Steele is superb in the title role, demonstrating that he can still play a substantial musical comedy role even as he approaches his 71st birthday next month. Polynesia's interjections in Talk to the Animals have gone, Dolittle has a whole verse of I've Never Seen Anything Like It before Blossom and Gertie and their circus even appear on stage and Dolittle has stolen Matthew's act one finale song After Today and Matthew's contribution to Where Are The Words?, changing the romantic plot completely. However there are changes to the show itself, with songs cut ( The Vegetarian has gone) and many others changed to make Dolittle's contribution to them substantially larger. It is not unusual to see a reduction in the scale of a production for a tour, and there are certainly big cuts in the scenery and the number and involvement of the animals in the action. This version of the show has been altered quite a bit from the 1998 stage original. Love interest is provided by the niece of the magistrate who, of course, finds him rude and frustrating at first but grows to love him. After a run-in with the local magistrate, Dolittle is helped to escape from gaol by a friendly circus elephant and goes on a voyage to find the great pink sea snail. His parrot, Polynesia, begins to teach him animal languages, and he decides to become an animal doctor. The rest of the book is about the doctor's efforts to communicate with the moth, while keeping the public away.Leslie Bricusse's famous musical version of the classic children's novels by Hugh Lofting about a man who can talk to animals in their own languages comes to Manchester starring the irrepressible Tommy Steele.ĭoctor Dolittle is a doctor who doesn't really like people very much and so struggles to earn a living, not helped by the fact that his patients have to negotiate his personal and varied menagerie whenever they come to see him. ![]() Fascinated, he plans a voyage to find them, but one of the giant moths appears in his garden. The doctor also begins to hear talk about the Giant Moths. He begins to hear many fascinating stories, particularly one about a water beetle who was taken to Brazil in a clod of mud on a duck's foot. In the second part of the book, because his garden is teeming with insects, Dolittle decides to learn their language and contrives an apparatus that will allow him to do this. Some of the dogs tell the stories of their lives over dinner. In the first part of the book, Doctor Dolittle's assistant, Tommy Stubbins, reports on Professor Quetch, curator of the Dog Museum in the Home for Crossbred Dogs. Doctor Dolittle's Garden (1927) is the eighth book in Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle series of children's books.
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