Orgy of confusion

Take a pile of bilge, add a bucket of drivel, stir in a few dead babies’ heads and you’ve got Coram Boy. The Olivier’s big Christmas production is a version of a kids’ book about abducted orphans in the 18th century. It’s certainly lavish. A huge cast, acres of costumes, enough lights to land the Shuttle, and an orchestra on stage. What for? An orgy of confusion and tedium, a choppy text and a gang of flouncing show-offs striding about the stage delivering ‘Egad, sir’ dialogue and occasionally breaking into a burst of Handel. Coram Boy, beware, is a curriculum text. The stalls are filled with parping, snickering, beeping teenagers and their earnest, breathy teachers, so it’s not so much a night at the theatre as a contest between audience and cast to see who can create the biggest, fussiest, stupidest and most hysterical quantity of meaningless noise. The stage wins, by a whisker.