The Gruffalo is the gentle, lyrical tale of a little mouse who out-brazens all of the predators in the wood with tales of his big bully friend the Gruffalo. Silly old creatures, don’t they know, ‘there’s no such thing as the Gruffalo’? And they don’t, the silly old creatures, and away they fly, scared of the chimera and leaving the mouse intact to go on his search for a tasty nut. Until…Well, it’s not ‘Waiting for Godot’, so I’ll tell you. Until, in a twist bigger than the mouse’s tail, the Gruffalo himself appears. You can imagine the children when this monster appears with his terrible claws/And terrible teeth in his terrible jaws…knobbly knees, and turned-out toes/And a poisonous wart at the end of his nose’! What horror! What anticipation! What glee!

You may wonder why, in a review of a play, I am going on about the book. Well it’s one of those stories that has found its perfect form. The book is the apotheosis of what the story can be, it is word perfect, it scans beautifully, it is sparsely written and has neither too many words nor too few. It is a classic for a very good reason; Julia Donaldson has got it just right. And of course a whole other dimension is opened up for us by Axel Scheffler’s beautiful illustrations. And children, and their carers, love it. So how could a play stack up to this towering achievement?

Well it does so very well as it happens. I took along my alibi, #smallgirl, and with some anticipation we sat on our plush Empire seats to see the story unfold. A couple of important decisions had been taken about the show. The first is that it was pretty close to the book. This decision may have been taken out of the producers’ hands as Donaldson is pretty clear how she wants her work portrayed and the publishers are understandably protective of their golden goose (I do mean the book is the goose, not Julia). Whatever, this decision is entirely right. Larding the production with couplets from the book not only gives it structure but gives its young (and old) audience a really recognisable hook to hang onto, and one that became a refrain in the show I saw, with young and old alike joining in with ‘"It's terribly kind of you, Fox, but no – I'm going to have lunch with a gruffalo."‘

(Personally, I’m still scarred by seeing the film Mary Poppins as a child and while it is a lovely film it seemed to have very little relationship with the magical world created in the book by PL Travers. Here they paint the stars on the sky and every child, until s/he learns to talk, can understand the birds. The film was a Traversty. Geddit?)

However, the producers knew enough about theatre to remain faithful while not making the show merely the book on legs. As well as the refrain, there are many theatrical set pieces, including some fab songs. I for one am still singing ‘G-g-g-Gruffalo!’ And this is where another decision came in. Rather than having full body costumes in a Disney (or for that matter Peppa Pig or In the Night Garden) stylee, the characters are all recognisably actors but with costume items denoting the creature they are playing. The mouse has two buns in her hair reminiscent of ears, and combat trousers with a long tail; we knew she was a mouse because she acted like a mouse and the narrator said she was a mouse. For me that is perfect; I love it when theatre relies on the suspension of disbelief rather than doing too much for the audience or trying to be what it is not. That is the magic of live theatre. But would it work for the young audience who might expect their mice to look, well, more mouse-like and less person-like? It was a risk, but looking round the audience it seemed to have wholeheartedly wrung its magic, with the children unequivocally supporting the mouse through all its travails and finding the whole thing spellbinding.

All of the predators were similarly costumed and played, recognisably, by one of the narrators. The Fox was a sly old Cockney who I’m sure has chatted me up in a bar somewhere. The Owl was a sky diving World War I ace with a top drawer accent and a flying jacket. And the snake was a triumph of Mexican campery with a sparkly jacket and a pair of maracas to die for; I could have watched him all day. Did some of this go over the children’s heads? Undoubtedly. The show played to more than one level with jokes for the adults while the children remained engrossed in the story, just like any good pantomime. And the Gruffalo himself was a triumph in a fabulous costume, big and spiny, tusked and warty, but somehow soft and cuddlable and remaining, as Sheffler and Donaldson had conceived him, ‘frightening but cute’.

And what did #smallgirl make of all this? Well her review would be very different to mine. Unlike the rest of the three year olds in the audience who were shouting, chanting, singing and all in all having a jolly good time, #smallgirl perched on her Daddy’s knee and clung on for dear life. What was up? Was it the Gruffalo? “No. I don’t like the men’, she said. Not even when they’re dressed in sparkly waistcoats it would appear. She obviously prefers her Mummy’s version.

Check else what else is on at the Liverpool Empire

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