Review: The Three Bears, Half Moon Theatre

There is something refreshingly subversive about Full House Theatre and Daryl & Co’s new 45-minute piece for ages 3+, as it quickly becomes clear that anyone expecting a sugary, Disneyfied retelling of the Goldilocks story is in for a delightful shock.

There are three chairs, sure. Domesticity rules, as we meet three ‘bachelor’, hairy bears complete with furry ears (Daryl Beeton, Ben Miles, Leon Wander), each fashioned by their individual favoured look in clothes – a kind of utility wear meets idiosyncratic taste, beautifully framing each bear’s mood and level of mischief on a scale of 1-10. 

The design (set and costumes – Jonathan Van Beek; lighting – Sean Gleason) sets the tone well: minimal, functional, and instantly readable – a wicker hanging chair, a dining chair. and a wheelchair – hinting that this is a home built around difference rather than uniformity. Rebecca Applin’s soundscape moves from warm, tinkling domesticity into club pulses and cinematic builds, as if we are listening to the collective Spotify playlist of the housemates: Donna Summer-ish disco, Earth Wind & Fire vibes, and the faint echo of La La Land. It is familiar and comforting – until it isn’t. In this pad, our bears potter through domestic rituals like they are more of a long-standing settled household – a kind of found family unit – than the nuclear “Daddy, Mummy, Baby” world of the familiar tale. It’s affectionate, recognisable and gently anarchic. 

But the arrival of a blue box hiding a white, foamy egg with a rogue yellow feather and tiny pink bow on top detonates the peaceful routine like a newborn arriving in a household that thought it had everything under control. From here, director Harriet Hardie embraces the glorious chaos: kitchen units shift, lights flicker, porridge spills everywhere, and slapstick comedy erupts in every corner. There’s a brilliant dusting routine to add some further tension, a Charlie Chaplin chair-organisation sequence, and a porridge-making scene that has the young audience in absolute laughter.

The performers’ non-verbal storytelling sprinkled with the odd word and phrase is a real high-point, inventive with objects, bodies, and space, big-hearted and deeply skilled, flipping from mischievous housemates, to fretful carers, to helpless onlookers, as the egg cracks open to first reveal a cute-ish chick. Later, this becomes the full Goldie figure; a toddler-like creature who becomes a tornado of feathered, bad-hair mayhem, full of wilfulness and sensory overload, who disrupts, exhausts and charms in equal measure.

These three bears, however unconventional, have built a life that works for them, but Goldie forces them to re-negotiate everything. Baths go wrong, bedtime fails spectacularly, and at one point they briefly give up and banish her… only to realise that the quiet is unbearable. Found family, after all, requires choice and commitment.

A beautifully imagined bedtime sequence – complete with lullaby swing-chair and an improvised folktale told through spoons, bowls, tea towels, and moon projections – shifts the play into something gentler and surprisingly moving. When morning arrives, and Goldie is now fully fledged, chaos returns with a vengeance, but by this point, the affection has deepened and lands with genuine warmth.

This is bold, generous, wonderfully odd family theatre – a queer, playful remix that celebrates the messy truth that “just right” doesn’t always look the way tradition tells us it should. And as a footnote, don’t dash out after the curtain call. Wait just a moment, as we are treated to a slide show of our bears and Goldie on their holidays in the happy years to come. Clever and tear-inducing. 

Performed & Devised by Ben Miles, Daryl Beeton & Leon Wander
Director: Harriet Hardie
Set & Costume Design: Jonathan Van Beek
Composer:  Rebecca Applin
Lighting Designer: Sean Gleason
Puppet Design & Creation: Charlotte Copeland
Puppetry Direction: Suzanne Nixon

The Three Bears has completed its run at the Half Moon Theatre,
but is touring to Manchester & Luton until Wednesday December 24