THE BFG

Chichester Festival Theatre

★★★★

“a production designed to entertain while celebrating imagination, dreams and friendship”

A young girl, a lonely giant and a world of dreams collide in this imaginative stage version of The BFG. Adapted by Tom Wells with additional material by Jenny Worton, the production brings Roald Dahl’s beloved story to the stage with a blend of puppetry, theatrical ingenuity and mischievous humour.

The story centres on Sophie, an orphan troubled by sleepless nights, who encounters the Big Friendly Giant during one of his midnight wanderings. Swept away to Giant Country, Sophie (Martha Bailey Vine) gradually realises that her captor, the BFG (John Leader), is not like the other giants who roam the world in search of children to devour. Instead he spends his nights collecting dreams and survives on the resolutely inedible snozzcumber. As Sophie begins to understand the scale of the threat posed by the other giants, including the blustering Bloodbottler (Richard Riddell), the unlikely pair devise a plan to stop them, one that ultimately involves soliciting the help of the Queen (Helena Lymbery).

Directed by Daniel Evans, the production places its emphasis on theatrical storytelling. The first half takes a little time to find its momentum as it establishes the world of giants and dreams, but once past this scene-setting the show settles into a livelier rhythm. Much of its charm lies in an inventive play with scale and perspective, using props, video and puppetry to evoke a world shared by giants and humans. From the magical doll’s house orphanage to lantern-like silhouettes of London landmarks and the decidedly unappetising snozzcumbers, the design constantly toys with proportion.

Central to this approach is the use of both human performers and puppet versions of characters to emphasise scale. The puppetry, designed and directed by Toby Olié with co-designers Daisy Beattie and Seb Mayer, provides a clever theatrical solution to the story’s shifting perspectives. It works particularly well in scenes between Sophie and the BFG. At times it becomes a little confusing, particularly when both puppet and human versions appear on stage together without an obvious narrative reason, but it remains an imaginative response to the story’s visual challenges.

At its centre is John Leader as the BFG. Balancing physical performance with the puppet’s presence, Leader brings awkward humour alongside a gentler melancholy, capturing the character’s mixture of innocence and quiet resilience. Sophie, played on press night by Martha Bailey Vine, captures the character’s blend of curiosity, vulnerability and determination. Helena Lymbery brings comic authority to the Queen, moving from a lonely monarch attended by her butler Tibbs (Sargon Yelda) to a decisive problem-solver once Sophie and the BFG arrive at Buckingham Palace. Philip Labey and Luke Sumner are particularly funny as the Queen’s guards, Captain Smith and Captain Frith, their elaborate moustaches becoming a running gag that lands equally well in both human and puppet form. Richard Riddell relishes the brutish swagger of the Bloodbottler, while Sophie’s friend Kimberley is played on press night by Uma Patel, bringing warmth and charm to the role and ending the play with a delightful sense of wonder, celebrating both her and the audience’s love of the magical.

The visual world is shaped by designer Vicki Mortimer, whose set moves fluidly between orphanage dormitory, Buckingham Palace and the strange landscape of Giant Country, while costumes by Kinnetia Isidore reflect the production’s playful, dreamlike aesthetic. Lighting by Zoe Spurr, video design by Akhila Krishnan and illusions by Chris Fisher help shift the tone from shadowy night-time encounters to the bright absurdity of the royal court. Music by Oleta Haffner and sound design from Carolyn Downing support the production’s blend of humour and unease, while movement direction by Ira Mandela Siobhan gives the giants and dream sequences a distinctive physical language. The puppets themselves are brought vividly to life by a skilled team of performers including Ben Thompson, Shaun McCourt, Elisa de Grey, Onioluwa Taiwo, Fred Davis, Corey Mitchell, Parkey Abeyratne and Sonya Cullingford.

Evans’s staging keeps the focus firmly on the unlikely friendship at the centre of the story, delivering a production designed to entertain while celebrating imagination, dreams and friendship.

THE BFG

Chichester Festival Theatre

Reviewed on 12th March 2026

by Ellen Cheshire

Photography by Marc Brenner

The BFG is a Chichester Festival Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Singapore Repertory Theatre, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, and Roald Dahl Story Company production

THE BFG

★★★★

“when the otherworldly music is allowed to flourish, the piece achieves some truly transcendent moments”

Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep is a musical autobiography of renowned Singaporean avant-garde pianist and multi-instrumentalist Margaret Leng Tan. A meditation on music and loss, the piece is an experimental one-woman show that seamlessly blends elements of biographical monologue, musical concert and performance art, written by ‘dramaturg’ Kok Heng Leun using text from Tan’s diaries and recollections. Tan, a long-time collaborator of seminal American composer John Cage, channels all the experience of her six-decade career, which began when she entered New York’s Julliard School of Music at the age of sixteen, to produce a compelling and original performance.

Naturally, music is central, serving as catalyst and accompaniment for the recounting of some pivotal experiences of Tan’s life. Using the innovative instruments for which she is known, Tan creates a dynamic sonic palette that ripples throughout the performance, reaching instances of real beauty. Alongside a grand piano that she modifies on stage by placing nuts and bolts between the strings to produce a bell-like tone, she employs a child’s toy piano – her trademark – as well as the triangle, melodica, cymbals, and wind-up music boxes. The music made on stage transfers from the live instruments to a recorded soundtrack, allowing the solo performer to weave layered soundscapes throughout the show, performing music by composer Erik Griswold.

The staging is relatively spare, director Tamara Saulwick working with just the instruments, the performer and two visible displays, a larger screen upstage right and a central vertical column onto which patterns, and, occasionally text, is projected. Much as toy instruments are used to create ethereal music, from this minimalist set comes a fascinating visual spectacle. Video projections (Nick Roux) interpret the live musical performance and are central to the success of the work: intricate solo piano pieces elicit a moving tapestry of lines that teasingly form perfect shapes before quickly dissipating, defying our desire for patterns as the music subverts our expectations of obvious melodies. In one particularly effective passage, Tan uses multiple music boxes to recall her first meeting with Cage, when twenty Julliard pianists simultaneously played his composition ‘Winter’. She remembers how it sounded to her like melting icicles, and this description is reflected through projections that evoke dripping ice.

Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep is marked by the absence of two guiding figures in Tan’s life, her mother and Cage, who are recalled both through her descriptions of them and video appearances on the screens. These images are ephemeral: footage of Cage and Tan in conversation has its audio unsynchronised, and a video apparition of her mother becomes clearer and fades with swells of music, suggesting that while art may bring us closer to the memory of those we love, it will never return them to us. This sense of loss is deeply affecting, as the work considers the transience of life and the imperfection of memory.

Some of the spoken passages, despite allowing Tan to demonstrate her wry sense of humour, are a little flat, including a lamentation on the predominance of mobile phones in contemporary society which feels particularly ill-fitting. These sections are brief, however, and, when the otherworldly music is allowed to flourish, the piece achieves some truly transcendent moments, illustrating why Margaret Leng Tan is such an important figure in twentieth-century music and beyond. When combining music and the personal experiences of the performer, the piece is at its best, dragon ladies may not weep but they are not unfeeling.

Tag Archives: Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay

THE BFG

★★★★

Chichester Festival Theatre

THE BFG

Chichester Festival Theatre

★★★★

“a production designed to entertain while celebrating imagination, dreams and friendship”