A magical show for all ages
Chichester Festival Theatre
⭑⭑⭑⭑
This joint production by Chichester Festival Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company is hugely impressive — no pun intended. If The BFG lacks quite the same tug at the heartstrings as that other celebrated Roald Dahl adaptation, Matilda, it more than compensates with its magical staging, inventive effects, and the delightful interplay between human performers and puppetry.
The set for The BFG is perfectly suited to the thrust stage at Chichester. We, the audience, are placed right in the heart of the giant’s world, as enormous figures loom out towards the front row and Chris Fisher’s illusions dazzle and surprise.
You probably know the story — the book has sold more than 40 million copies — but just in case: Sophie is a little girl living in an orphanage. One night she encounters a mysterious giant who is out collecting dreams. To preserve his secrecy he carries her off to Giant country, but the two soon become friends, and Sophie christens him the Big Friendly Giant.
The BFG explains that his nightly mission is to capture pleasant dreams and deliver them to unhappy children, while destroying nightmares. He also reveals that other giants roam the land — far larger and far less friendly — and that they have a taste for what he calls “human beans”. Together, Sophie and the BFG devise a plan to enlist the Queen’s help in capturing the fearsome giants.
Central to the success of this production is its ingenious use of puppets, designed by Toby Olié. At times the BFG appears as a puppet alongside a human actor playing Sophie; at others the roles are reversed, with Sophie represented as a puppet while the BFG is portrayed by an actor. The transitions between these forms are executed so seamlessly that you barely notice them happening.
The puppeteers are magnificent. The BFG puppet is operated by four performers, who imbue him with life through wonderfully subtle movements and gestures. When he appears at human scale, John Leader gives us a warm, endearing BFG, and much of the comedy arises from his exuberant ‘squiff-squiddling’ of the English language: wondercrump, winksquiffler, gobblefunking, and so on.
On the night I attended, Sophie was confidently played by Martha Bailey Vine, who navigated the character’s emotional journey — from fear and frustration to sadness and delight — with assurance. The adaptation by Tom Wells also introduces a friend for Sophie called Kimberley, excellently portrayed on that occasion by Uma Patel.
The Queen, played with relish by Helena Lymbery, is enormous fun, evolving from ceremonial figurehead to decisive leader. Indeed, this is very much a story in which females ultimately save the day.
Support comes from two hapless RAF men, played with great humour by Philip Labey and Luke Sumner. Sargon Yelda is Tibbs the butler, who begins stiffly formal but grows increasingly animated as events unfold. And there’s the villainous giant Bloodbottler, played at human scale by Richard Riddell, which creates another fascinating puppetry dynamic: the BFG becomes a small puppet, and Sophie an even tinier mannequin.
And this is perhaps where the production reveals both its greatest strength and its one slight weakness. As wonderful as the puppetry is, it can sometimes be harder to emotionally connect with the smaller puppets. The sense of danger is therefore somewhat diminished, along with the emotional stakes. That said, I suspect this may simply be the perspective of an adult — younger audience members are likely to be completely enthralled.
The BFG is a magical show from former CFT Director Daniel Evans, who is now at the RSC. Glasses of frobscottle all round!
The BFG can be seen at Chichester Festival Theatre until 11 April 2026 (buy tickets directly from cft.org.uk) and then in Singapore.
Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre.
Click here to watch this review on the YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven.
