Meet your new Paddington, and she’s a familiar face to Star Wars audiences. Launching at the Savoy Theater in London on 30th November, Paddington The Musical features Arti Shah – onstage double for Maz Kanata, Gwellis Bagnoro and a GNK Droid in The Force Awakens, along with many other roles – inside the costume of the bear from Peru, and the work that went into bringing this diminutive national treasure to life was a time-consuming and detailed process that saw Arti involved, along with another Star Wars alum, Tahra Zafar.
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.”
