Snow Mice! at The Egg at Theatre Royal Bath this Christmas

After a decade of delighting audiences around the country, Snow Mouse returns in a frosty follow-up featuring two mischievous cousins and three adventurous newcomers. With original music using cello and guitar, live sound effects and puppets, Snow Mice! (suitable for ages 3–9 and their families) follows three children at the start of the winter holidays as they arrive in a strange new house.

But where will they all sleep? Will they have to share a room? And will it ever snow again? When night falls and the youngest child is woken by the appearance of a mysterious Snow Mouse, he ventures outside into the snow with his new friend. Though his siblings remain doubtful such creatures exist, the three brave adventurers set off on a snowy journey to the top of a hill and into a boundless world of imagination—where they discover that Snow Mice are real after all. At its heart, Snow Mice! is a playful tale about sibling adventures, what we believe in and finding your feet in unfamiliar places.

Snow Mouse was created 12 years ago by The Egg and Travelling Light, with the puppet beautifully crafted by Marc Parrett and Edwina Bridgman. Since then, this enchanting character has become something of a local celebrity, delighting more than 45,000 people across the UK each winter with its charming tale of adventure and friendship. For many children in Bath, Snow Mouse has been their very first taste of theatre.

Director Alex Byrne said, “At NIE we’ve made lots of Christmas shows before and have performed in various places including Cambridge Junction, the Tobacco Factory in Bristol, Polka Children’s Theatre in London, and even at the New Victory Theater in New York but this is our first collaboration with The Egg in one of the loveliest dedicated children’s theatre spaces in the country.

I’ve seen and loved most of The Eggs Christmas shows, and it’s amazing to have the chance to contribute to making one this time round! The original Snow Mouse is such a lovely show and well loved by audiences in Bath so it’s a big responsibility to think about making a bigger version that’s focused on a slightly older age group. What I loved about the original Snow Mouse show was a sense of playfulness, the way that it embraced its audience and the very subtle parallels between the experience of the mouse and the child in the story. With Snow Mice we’re trying to keep hold of what was magical about the original and take the story a little further and a little deeper into the snowy landscape. It’s a great challenge and we can’t wait to share Christmas with new audiences to NIEs work in Bath.”
New International Encounter (NIE) is an international company that makes award-winning theatre performances and projects through a mix of physical theatre, multiple languages, live music, storytelling and a European ensemble. They have offices in Asker, Norway, in Prague, Czech Republic and in Cambridge in the UK. In 2011 they were awarded the ASSITEJ Award for Artistic Excellence; the first time the award was given to a UK or Norwegian based company. They make theatre shows for children, young people, families and adults – for anyone who loves a great story – and they have shared their work all over the world including in Asia, Oceania, the Americas, and all over Europe. They have played inside the Arctic Circle and on the subtropical Japanese Island of Okinawa, in a deserted fire station in Austria and at Sydney Opera House in Australia. They host talent development opportunities where they share their ways of working, seeing and being together and their ways of looking at the world. They bring together artists from different places, backgrounds and trainings to work together. They work with communities, school classes and places to co-create imaginative and transformative performance projects.
The Egg at Theatre Royal Bath is the only theatre in the South West of England dedicated to producing and presenting work with exacting artistic standards for children and young people. A hub for creativity, learning and culture, the company presents a year-round programme of engagement and education activities, along with producing and touring work nationally and internationally. Recent productions include The Little Prince (The Egg, 2024, Shanghai & Beijing 2025, Edinburgh Fringe 2025), Robin Hood (The Egg 2024), Caroline Horton’s Muckers (The Egg , Madrid, UK tour 2019 – 20), Josephine (The Egg and national tour 2022-23), Squirrel (The Egg 2019 and 2021, The Unicorn 2023 and 2026, Birmingham 2024) and I Wish I Was A Mountain (The Egg 2018, UK tour 2019 – present, China (2022), Ireland 2023, Canada 2024 -25).