Christopher Haydon's adaptation of Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat is running at the Rose theatre in Kingston upon Thames, and the Guardian's review calls it "perky" and "fun-forward" theatre.

The production adapts Jerome's 1889 novella about a trio of late Victorian gentlemen who row up the Thames accompanied by Montmorency, a fox terrier. In Haydon's staging, Montmorency appears as a rag puppet. The show also features a fake moustache and, according to the review, an aria devoted to reeking cheese — details the critic lists among the production's accumulating mischief.

The audience on the reviewed performance included a notable local figure: Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat politician, who watched the show in his Kingston constituency after returning from the Lib Dem conference. The Guardian's reviewer wryly wondered whether the "up-for-fun" politician might suddenly appear on stage in a Scooby-Doo suit. He did not — though the review notes that Haydon's production does feature one actor making an applause-winning entrance from an improbable location.

The adaptation, the critic observes, is more liberal and democratic than Jerome's original text, whose language has often dated in meaning or propriety since its publication in 1889. Haydon's version effectively updates the material for a contemporary audience while preserving the story's very English comic spirit.

Jerome K Jerome published Three Men in a Boat in 1889. The novella, long counted among the best-loved works of English comic fiction, follows three friends — and the dog Montmorency — on a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.

The Rose theatre, located in Davey's Kingston upon Thames constituency, continues to stage the production, offering local audiences a comic river journey rendered with puppets, props and at least one surprise entrance.

For a novella now well over a century old, the adaptation's willingness to brush aside dated language suggests the material still travels well — and that the Thames, at least on stage, remains open for mischief.