Carved out with huge heart

Forget pantos, the Globe's thoughtfully staged production of 'Pinocchio' is a wonderful festive treat

- Alice Saville

'Tis the season when a family trip to the theatre means being assaulted by frenzied pop numbers, dazzled by lurid costumes, and bombarded with sweets hurled through the air. That is happily not the case at Shakespeare's Globe, whose venerable wooden “O” houses a rather more wholesome kind of show this Christmas. “If this lot wanted fun, they’d be across the river at the Palladium,” says roguish showman Franzine, ribbing the high-minded families at this classy outdoor take on Pinocchio.

The playwright Charlie Josephine has adapted Carlo Collodi’s strange, sanctimonious 1883 novel into a quaintly rustic musical that feels a million miles away from both Disney’s version and from anything else you'll see on stage right now. It uses this story of a wooden puppet to explore what it means to be human, and to be loved - and ends up pulling the heartstrings of everyone in the audience.