Review of Mog's Christmas at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Back in 2022, the theatre group The Wardrobe Ensemble created a sweet and adventurous staging of Judith Kerr's classic children's character, Mog - The Forgetful Cat. For this Christmas season at Royal & Derngate, Mog returns with, suitably enough, Mog's Christmas. The show, just a crisp, action-packed hour, retells two past adventures alongside a Christmas vignette.

Kerr's Mog first appeared in 1970, and it launched a remarkable run of books over 50 years featuring the puzzled feline, culminating in the final book released in 2020, following Kerr's death at 95 in 2019. Kerr is most famous for one of her other tales, The Tiger Who Came to Tea. However, in Mog's Christmas, the show presents three entertaining little stories featuring her other, slightly lesser-known feline character.

Over the course of the hour, we see Mog successfully foil a burglar, survive a trip to the V.E.T., and then, in the brand-new stage story, a Christmas adventure where Mog gets confused by a mysterious moving tree.

It is all a delight, created for the stage by the endlessly talented team at The Wardrobe Ensemble. Their years working together continue to bring work that shines to the stage, and with Mog, showing that they can create a show aimed predominantly at children as well.

The show opens with a friendly postman on his round, delivering mail to a neighbourhood where, behind closed doors, lurk pets of every size, including behind one, that forgetful cat, Mog. Playing the postman and many other characters throughout is Tom England, who also forms the role of narrator for the adventures. His boundless enthusiasm shines throughout, and his physical ability makes all the people he portrays larger than life, in keeping with the broad nature of a children's show.

All of the cast work hard on this, with the prominent Thomas family played by Jesse Meadows as Nicky, Aimee Louise Bevan as Debbie, Heather Porte as Mrs Thomas, and Ben Vardy as Mr Thomas, bringing exaggerated personalities to the roles and making characters ideally suited to keeping the children's attention.

Bringing music and a few incidental characters to the stage is also the talented Daniella Agredo Piper, often behind the keys, but occasionally also upon the stage proper with a few quirky characters.

Finally, we have, of course, Mog, brought to the stage, not by puppetry, but by the heavily costumed Faye Lord, and she is a delight, perfecting all those knowing mannerisms and behaviours well known to any cat owner. It's a challenge for any actor to portray a character purely through facial, physical and a range of meows, but Lord is great at it.

The set and costume work by Laura McEwen is fabulous and dynamic, allowing for subtle expansions throughout as the tales are told. Alongside the stories are numerous musical numbers written by Joey Hickman, and these perfectly suit the stories and are fabulously catchy as well.

Mog's Christmas is a delight and captivates its target audience, keeping them enthralled throughout the show. If you did happen to see the show's original run, only one sequence is totally new; however, the Christmas sequence is an uplifting delight in itself, and the whole hour sets the scene perfectly for the Christmas season ahead.

A fabulous, magical and funny hour of theatre.
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Performance reviewed: Wednesday, 10th December 2025, at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton.

Mog's Christmas is at Royal & Derngate until Wednesday, 31st December 2025.

For further details about the Royal & Derngate and to book tickets, see their website at http://www.royalandderngate.co.uk

Production photos: Manuel Harlan