There’s more than one super furry animal powering this lively adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’ picture book. Gruff Rhys provides the score but there’s a supporting cast of cuddly plush seagull puppets as well as a huggable penguin with velvety flippers and a coat that seems to comprise hundreds of shower poufs.
The gulls, operated by a gang of fisherfolk musician-puppeteers, start by giving the young audience a friendly peck, swiping a teacher’s woolly hat – to the delight of their school group – and threatening to slurp someone’s coffee. Under Olly Taylor’s puppetry direction, they fittingly keep a constant presence in this seaside tale, their squawks accompanying Rhys’s score which is a buoyant mix of folk, funk – for a bathtub scene with glittery soapsuds – and ambient sounds evoking the ocean’s open wonder, heightened by Jai Morjaria’s lighting.
