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Paddington stands within touching distance. His fur flutters as he turns, his neat button nose sniffs the air, and his eyes soften with a smile. For years, design details of the bear for Paddington the Musical, directed by Luke Sheppard, have been kept top secret. Now here he is, in his blue duffel coat and red hat. A quiet theatrical marvel. “What we’re doing,” says producer Sonia Friedman, “has never been done before.”
Standing around 1.2 metres (just under 4ft) tall, the bear is beautifully round, all belly and sloping shoulders. He is not an exact replica of the Paddingtons we’ve seen in illustrations or movies, but something new. His shaggy, caramel fur has a gentle wave, and his white snout is dotted with a brown nose, ideal for sniffing out trouble. Around his neck sits a label, threaded through an old piece of string, asking for someone to look after him.
When fellow producer Eliza Lumley first had the idea of doing a musical of Michael Bond’s Paddington in 2016, the immediate question was how to do the bear. “We wanted to see if it was possible to have Paddington on stage,” says Friedman, who joined the team two years in. “Just Paddington.” They tested out every idea, finding puppetry to be “gorgeous”, Lumley says, but “slightly whimsical”. The presence of puppeteers also complicated the desire to have this bear alone on stage, lost at a train station and waiting to be found.
The innovative answer for this stage adaptation, written by Jessica Swale with music by Tom Fletcher, began to emerge when Neal Scanlan, creature effects artist and designer of Star Wars’ Chewbacca, pointed them towards Tahra Zafar. Having conjured creatures for Star Wars, English National Opera and that pesky monkey for PG Tips, Zafar now boasts the imponderably lovely title of “Paddington Bear designer”.
“We looked back at the books and Peggy Fortnum’s beautiful illustrations,” says Zafar, “and all the different versions of Paddington over the years.” The influence of Fortnum’s designs is particularly apparent; where the movie Paddington’s face leans towards realism, Zafar’s design has Fortnum’s wide, teddy-like quality. Zafar describes the technological routes they explored as “quite fancy”, but they kept returning to simpler ideas that captured the bear’s purity. “We wanted to create something that you respond to with your heart.” The result is part toy, part real. Part tech, part costume, part magic.
The heavy padded bear suit is then brought to life by the skill and partnership of two performers: Arti Shah and James Hameed. Over years of workshops, the duo have formed a unique synchrony that allows us to believe we are watching a walking, talking, singing – and occasionally dancing – Peruvian bear. Shah’s experience as a creature performer for film has prepared her for physically playing the bear, while Hameed provides the voice, with the twinned nature of the role never hidden from the audience. At a recent workshop, a child supplied a more fitting description of Hameed’s role when she marched up to him and announced: “You’re Paddington’s soul.”
Hameed also remotely puppeteers Paddington’s facial expressions using a control panel. This means he is in charge of the bear’s infamous hard stare. These controls were originally a separate role, but through workshops, they found that the instinctual relationship between the pair cut any delay in Paddington’s reactions. As an avid gamer, Hameed was thrilled.
Physically performing inside the bear requires immense strength, stamina and skill. “Before we started rehearsals I sat in the sauna for a whole week, every day, in my blacks,” says Shah. “It was a way of training my mind. The bear is not as hot as the sauna.” She has experience with such unusual performance constraints. When she was in the movie Attack the Block, she was required to run on all fours in a costume that weighed half her bodyweight and had arm extensions. “This is so much lighter,” she laughs.
While eight shows a week creates new physical challenges (actors Abbie Purvis and Ali Sarebani are alternate Paddington performers), the theatre also brings new joys; this musical will be Shah’s first experience of taking a bow. “It hasn’t sunk in,” she says. “I’m just humbled and excited to be doing this, especially being a female Asian of short stature. To show my young son, who has been diagnosed with my condition, that anything is possible.” An enormous fan of the books and movies, her son is frequently found singing Fletcher’s songs from the show. “I’m doing this for him,” Shah says.
For many of the team, the bear holds an emotional resonance that goes beyond nostalgia for bedtime stories. “Paddington means something different to everyone,” Hameed says. “My father came over in the 70s from Pakistan, looking for a home. For my British mum, Paddington was manners, tea and marmalade sandwiches. For my dad, he was a visualisation of his own story.”
When Bond first wrote A Bear Called Paddington in 1958, he described an evacuee’s label around the character’s neck that read: “Please look after this bear.” The team behind Paddington the Musical evidently takes this role seriously. Zafar mentions a label her team have sewn on to the bottom of one of Paddington’s paws: “Made in Peru.”
“It’s quite subtle,” Zafar says. “I don’t think anyone’s going to see it, but we know it’s there.” It’s a mark of the care and attention that has gone into crafting this bear. “I think when you really love making something, that love gets transferred to the thing you’re creating. I’m hoping that’s what you see in Paddington. All that love on stage.”
