Snail

I was told stage version of any book won't be as attractive as the original book. That's the rule, everyone says so.

It would be natural for me to read Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, without bothering to watch the film version.

True wit, however, exists onstage, and Toby Mitchell's drama version of the picture book The Snail and the Whale changes the way I look at adaptations. For those of you who haven't read the book version, that's a tall tale of a tiny snail. And a great big, grey-blue humpback whale. That isn't just a snail, and it is a snail with the itchy foot to sail, to hitch a lift, to see the shooting stars and enormous waves. The story book chronicles the voyage of this tiny snail sitting on the tail of the humpback whale. All the way from the coral caves to the golden sand.

I've been reading this picture book with my daughter for a while. We watched the drama version last week.

But it's hard to transform this story into a drama. A dizzyingly complicated challenge to depict two creatures with extreme ranges in body size. Remember, a tiny snail and a great big humpback whale. Imagine your difficulty in telling the story of Gulliver's Travels in drama format, for that matter.

How should the drama get around? Obviously I'm not supposed to give away too much of the plot. I would only go so far as to let you know the production team borrowed the theme of Storybook Soldiers. That's an organisation which helps British military personnel record bedtime stories for their children to listen to while daddies are away.

So instead of casting as the tiny snail and the great big whale, the two characters become a girl who stays home and her dad in the navy.

What could be easier for a drama actor to be a little girl with itchy foot than to be a tiny snail longing to go around the world? Then the bedtime story (of the tiny snail and the great big whale) recorded by the navy daddy enters the picture.

The transition - from an adventurous snail to the curious little girl and from the brave whale to the strong dad who serves on a military ship abroad - deftly connects two stories. My worries are over. The original picture book and the adapted drama mingle like Velcro. And I understand what is meant by the dad when he says in the drama, "A good story can take you all round the world, without even leaving your room."