Tale of Tintin

I have never been to Watford before, or even considered going. The only thing I know about the place - not counting Billy Mack's radio interview scene in Love Actually - is that once you're there it's unwise to venture any further north. When we're finished, I'm getting straight back on the train.

I am here to meet Rufus Norris, director and stage-adaptor (with David Greig) of Hergé's Adventures of Tintin. Rufus's recent directorial successes include the relatively adult Market Boy (excellent) and Vernon God Little (I heard good things), so I'm excited to see what he has done with a children's comedy. And, of course, I want to know how he's got the Himalayas on to that 20ft stage.

But let's start small. "Were you a childhood fan?" I begin, hoping for a zesty anecdote about formative years spent dressing up in Addis Ababa. "Nah, I was Asterix . . ." Oh dear. This will not end well for one of us.

Rufus had, however, been reading the Tintins with his eldest son, when the Young Vic (where he was associate director) succeeded in securing permission for a stage-adaptation. The resulting play, premiered at the Barbican in 2006, was essentially Tintin in Tibet: Live.

"Very quickly it became apparent that Tintin in Tibet was the one we were going to have a crack at," said Rufus, defending the choice. One reason was theatrical practicality: Prisoners of the Sun, for example, "graphically one of the most beautiful" of the Tintins, involves railways, mountains, jungle, underwater escapades, a cavern, the temple of the sun, and Tintin being burned (ish) on a pyre during an eclipse of the sun.

"With Tintin in Tibet, it's white and it's blue . . . So it's possible to make a theatre show, and still honour the artwork. When we went to the Hergé estate and said we want to do Tintin in Tibet they got it straight away."

"Tintin in Tibet is also the best story': Hergé called it 'a song to friendship' and it's the humanity in it . . . nobody dies, there are no guns, it's not a Boy's Own adventure in the way that a lot of the others are. It's about friendship, it's about him trying to save his friend Chang: and all the other principal friendships that had developed through all the other books - with his dog Snowy, with Captain Haddock - are really tested."

There are reasons why this adventure has more emotional weight than the others, why it exchanges the usual pursuit of a bad guy in an exotic land for a single-minded quest to rescue Tintin's Chinese friend from the perilous snowfields of the Himalayas and the clutches of the Abominable Snowman.

George Remi (= GR = RG = Hergé) wrote Tintin in Tibet while recovering from a breakdown brought on by his collapsing marriage. Norris points out the symbolic man-lost-in-blizzard image that had been Hergé's choice (rejected) for the front cover, and also the frame that he believes includes a self-portrait of Hergé and his future wife.

The narrative itself is full of personal resonances, being effectively a wish-fulfilment on Hergé's part, reuniting himself with the real Chang Chong-chen, his friend and artistic collaborator on the early Tintin adventure The Blue Lotus. At the time of writing, Chang had been lost in the chaos of Communist China for 30 years.

In an effort to highlight the increased reality behind Tintin's character in this particular story, Norris and Greig have gone to some lengths to knock some of the polish off his typical Wonder Boy characterisation, "making Tintin more fallible. It's a story, and in a story you can't have somebody who's that clean . . . it's not interesting".

"In terms of a real narrative, your protagonist - at the crisis point - has got to deal with himself, his own issues, essential character, whatever you want to call it."

I become slightly concerned that the fun might have been knocked out of the story, that it might be slightly too mature in dealing with relationships, too emotionally complex in the interest of not being two-dimensional, too earnest in its references to working conditions in central Asia, and local poverty. But looking at the script, I see that Norris's direct approach has a light-hearted counterpart on the page.

The endorsement from the Hergé estate notwithstanding, significant changes have been made to the text (and less significant ones to the narrative, like abbreviation of the enormous timeline); but for the most part the finished product is very much in the spirit of the original.

Orlando Gough's music is similarly unintrusive, arising organically enough from the scenes in which it features: crooning in the café, chanting from the monks, Snowy singing drunkenly.

Hergé's Adventures of Tintin looks like being classic family entertainment, replete with loyal Snowy, the thundering Haddock, and a gaggle of monks and sherpas (not to mention a man in a monkey suit). Mums and dads take note: Tintin will be at the Playhouse for two weeks (special rates for children) just when the tail end of the holiday starts to prove wearisome. And if it's as good as I think, you might just get away with going twice!

Hergé's Adventures of Tintin opens on Tuesday and continues until August 25. Call the box office on 01865 305305 or visit the www.tintintheshow.co.uk website.