Feathers in the Snow, Southwark Playhouse, London, review Coming from a writer as out-there and seemingly addicted to the dystopian as Philip Ridley (his most notorious play involved a child being used in a snuff-movie scenario), I expected this "family show" to be the sort of thing likely to leave kids traumatised. Is the title a riddle? Is that "snow" as in cocaine? But no, it turns out that the piece, the final main-house show at the Southwark Playhouse before it relocates temporarily to Elephant and Castle, refers to actual feathers, actual snow - or at least proper fairy-tale feathers, proper fairy-tale snow. Ridley is also a respected, widely read children's author, and here his untameable imagination takes wing in an almost heart-warming way. Even if the story loses altitude and direction in the second half, the pleasures en route are plentiful and the chief pity of David Mercatali's production is that, booked too often into a 7.45pm slot, not enough youngsters will see it. True, it begins with a young woman, Lena (Nelly Harker), rejecting a weedy, well-meaning suitor in favour of a more muscular rival (Craig Vye's Jared), causing the former to top himself and the couple's baby daughter, struck numb with that horror, to require the magical presence of a "Blazerbird" feather to restore her to speech and happiness. In the incidents that flow from that, as years race by, there's the threat of torture, some simulated violence and a lot of described bloodshed and warfare, but all this is done in a fantastic spirit of "let's pretend." With men dressing up as gossipy old women, together with copious asides and larky interruptions, the whole thing owes more to Monty Python than to the degradations of the YouTube age. Harnessing the considerable energy and commitment of Southwark Playhouse's fresh-faced Young Company, who take on multiple supporting roles, Mercatali manages to keep up the pace despite the tale's slackening appeal. At the end it's hard to care about the fate of Lena's descendant 10 generations on, yet as the cast chorus a final anthem of hope, urging us to "feel our joy now, feel it flow," it's also hard not to be swept up with their lust for life. You're left with the strange sensation that deep down maybe Philip Ridley is actually a big old softie. Tickets: 020 7407 0234; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk