A whole new generation of children will come to love the sleepy pink-and-white cat Bagpuss this Christmas as Soho theatre and Birmingham Stage Company team up for a stage production of the 1970s children’s television show.
Bagpuss was a 1974 television series about a saggy old cloth cat owned by a little girl called Emily. Each episode began with a sepia photograph of Bagpuss and his fellow toys in the shop where they lived. When Emily left the shop, Bagpuss would come to life and mend whatever object she had left him, with the help of Madeleine the rag doll, Professor Yaffle the woodpecker book-end and the mice from the Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ.
All the programme’s characters will take to the stage in this new show which, though aimed at children aged seven and under, is just as likely to appeal to nostalgic parents.
Bagpuss continues Soho theatre’s recent tradition of presenting family shows at Christmas, following Julia Donaldson’s Stick Man and Lauren Child’s That Pesky Rat. Its producing partner, Birmingham Stage Company, has a wealth of experience creating children’s shows, including Skellig, the Horrible Histories and many adaptations of Roald Dahl books.
Bagpuss plays at Soho theatre from 9 December to 9 January.
CB