GOODNIGHT MISTER TOM Phoenix Theatre

If you are looking for a play to take young teenagers to, which you will also enjoy, let me recommend this adaptation of Michelle Magorian’s award-winning adult children’s novel by David Wood. An illiterate London boy, who has been verbally and physically abused by his deeply disturbed mother, is evacuated to the country during World War 2 and put in the care of an elderly recluse (Oliver Ford Davies). Here he finds kindness, compassion, friendship and love for the first time in his life. I shall be very surprised if Angus Jackson’s well cast and uplifting production doesn’t move you. The sheepdog is sheer delight, thanks to the puppeteer, Elisa De Grey, and its creator and director, Toby Olié. The dog is as convincing as the horse is in War Horse and there is no higher praise than that. The puppeteer is, to all intents and purposes, invisible.