But while there have been many stage adaptations of Tove Jansson’s beloved books, none have so far included circus tricks.
Now, Jacksons Lane has created a children’s show based on Jansson’s short story The Fir Tree, featuring the adventurous Moomin family – alongside music, juggling, and acrobatics.
Christmas Comes to Moominvalley runs at Jacksons Lane until January 5. (Image: Courtesy of Jacksons Lane)
Jansson’s family remain the keepers of the global phenomenon that is the Moomins and license uses of the characters. So it was lucky that Chief Executive Roleff Kråkström and his wife, Jansson’s niece Sophia, had seen a show at the Highgate arts centre.
“We were very uneducated about modern circus but we saw something completely different and were absolutely blown away,” says Roleff.
“When Jackson’s Lane proposed this, it was a quick and easy decision because they will make something completely new and interesting.
“In essence our job is to find the most talented theatre people, designers, publishers or artists to work with – not to worship ashes, but to pass on the flame.
“The point is not to hang onto something of no value, but to create an interesting new adaptation never seen before.”
Jacksons Lane has been in active contact over Christmas Comes to Moominvalley, which sees the Moomins awake from their annual winter slumber to be told that Christmas is coming – except they have no idea what it is.
Roleff says the design has tweaked for the circus elements: “We are not crazy we know if you have to juggle you need to adapt the costumes so they are not dangerous!”
Jansson herself wrote the script and designed the costumes for the first Moomin stage shows in the ’50s, which were directed by her friend and sometime lover Vivica Bandler.
An early production was said to have traumatised children when the actors playing the Moomin’s took off their heads.
“It’s something that haunts the Moomins on stage,” says Roleff dryly.
Tove herself disliked the first Japanese anime productions which inserted racing cars, swords and Samurai, and forbid them from being distributed in Japan.
“But I never heard of her not liking a traditional drama,” says Roleff.
For the family, licensing is about staying true to Jansson’s ethos, writing, and illustrations rather than Disneyfication of the brand.
Roleff points out that most character brands are created by entertainment industry giants, who “construct assets which can do anything if they generate cash.”
“I am a great fan of Disney but this is a different ball game. They produce new films every year and anchor their merchandising in that film. We don’t have that many stories, we have one brand and the reason for creating that world is completely defined.”
Drawing a distinction between entertainment as a commodity, and art which offers “something you didn’t have in your head already,” he adds: “Tove didn’t create a merchandise brand, she was an artist who used her freedom to do what served her work best. She created the Moomins as a rigid construction where every detail serves an artistic purpose, they are not props to be used in new and exciting ways.”
Born in Helsinki in 1914, Jansson enjoyed a bohemian upbringing in an artistic family. She studied art in Stockholm and Paris before holding her first exhibition in 1943.
Her first Moomin-like drawings emerged in the late 1930s with The Moomins and the Great Flood published in 1945.
“They started more like a doodle,” says Roleff. “Tove had lost the urge to paint and started writing these family fairytales.
“The first book is an allegory for the war – a story about refugees looking for a home. At that time every family had lost loved ones or had to relocate.
“She uses catastrophe as a means of disjointing her characters – it’s much more interesting to portray people in crisis because they open their minds to new ways of acting.”
Jansson herself lived much of her life in a same sex relationship and in conservative post-war Europe The Moomins presented a different idea of family.
“She was very much a child of her time. After two World Wars her generation had lost faith in the previous generation’s capacity to create something meaningful, and the modernist movement was born,” says Roleff.
Finland was also the first country to give political rights to women in 1906.
“Tove could choose a career, vote, hold a bank account, or acquire land – that hadn’t been possible for her mother. She could choose a life of free sexuality, she lived with a woman the bulk of her life and decided not to have children.
“She was enormously value driven. She had an ethos that ran through everything she did but was not explicitly political.
“She put her belief in the core human values of kindness, tolerance, respect for nature, in such an elegant and omnipresent way in her work that even an idiot would understand.”
Chiming with those values, Moomin Characters donates money to causes such as Oxfam, Unicef, and for the 80th anniversary The Red Cross, raised from special editions of the books.
“We anchor ourselves in the values not because we have to or for marketing purposes, but because we want to.”
Ironically Jansson’s most famous creation kept her from what she considered her true calling as a painter.
“She became a megastar and was quite overwhelmed by fan attention,” says Roleff.
“She answered more than 10,000 letters personally which must have been very laborious, and she got frustrated that people had very little respect for integrity or privacy.
“She saw herself as a painter first, and she suffered a lot from not having the time to focus on her work.”
He believes The Moomins have endured for eight decades because of their “universal values” and says new readers come to them through their parents.
“It’s adults who present them to children for the first time because they really want their children to be happy, and the books are this enormous road map to happiness.”
Christmas Comes to Moominvalley runs at Jacksons Lane in Highgate until January 5.
