Showing @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until Sun 30 Dec

Originally a 1978 children’s book, Raymond Briggs’ classic has been synonymous with Christmas since Channel 4’s 1982 popular adaptation into an animation by Dianne Jackson and the 1985 cover of Walking in the Air warbled by pre-pubescent chorister Aled Jones. Devised for stage in 1993 by Bill Alexander, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre transform The Snowman into a feature length ballet retaining refraining from dialogue and retaining story’s memorable moments (pineapple nose, the motorbike) but stretches the film’s 26 minutes to an hour and a half by embellishing it with choreography and new characters.

Despite the appealing cartoon feel of the set, props and costumes through which Alexander tries to recreate Briggs’ sketchy illustrations, sadly they can’t offer the detail so essential to the original’s aesthetic. The over sized furniture and light pastel colours relax and soothe, creating a bright and jovial atmosphere suitable for the magical adventure supported by a bright and detailed costume menagerie. Incorporating large amounts of ballet, the cast gracefully flit around the stage so that even normal movements hint a stylised dancing with even the young Boy showing an impressive talent for the medium.

However it is too long. At three times the length of the cartoon Alexander relies on a lot of filler (i.e. dancing) to plump out the narrative resulting in the plot sometimes feeling stagnant. Also, the first half is fragmented by repeated blackouts interrupting the story’s flow creating a sense of removal from the action and restlessness at the slow pace. Because of the storyline’s infamy and the length its been stretched to it’s easy to lose focus and the production doesn’t do enough to draw your interest back into the characters. It’s The Snowman’s illustrations that transport the reader/viewer into the miraculous escapade, particularly seeing the ground below in the Walking in the Air sequence and Alexander’s dawdling motorbike and flimsy whale are an unsatisfacory comparison. So rather than capturing the original’s essence, Alexander has instead transformed it from a eyecatching short story into a pretty but diluted ballet.

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