Roald Dahl’s “The Twits” is currently playing in London, so of course Snookums and I headed off to see the opening night performance Tuesday. I’m sorry to say that I was rather underwhelmed by the show. It seemed more like a Christmas panto than legitimate children’s theater. I could count on one hand the lines of text that actually survived from Dahl’s book, and those were mostly the insults that the Twits hurled at each other. The problem with dramatizing this story is that it was always a crude and confusing piece. One one hand you’re supposed to loathe the Twits and on the other you’re supposed to laugh at them. In the book, Quentin Blake’s manic scribbled illustrations hit the right tone and made the crude bits seem more cartoony and surreal. Playing it straight is not the right strategy for a stage adaptation, I fear. And, as with all the Dahl dramatizations I’ve seen lately, there was an emphasis on cheezy moralizing that wasn’t present in the original work. This production wanted us to feel sorry for the poor Mugglewumps, captured from the jungle and forced into degrading circus slavery, yet at the same time it urged us to laugh delightedly as the monkeys’ captors scratched their bums and farted. Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy it. (I do feel a bit guilty for saying that though, considering that Sadler’s Wells linked to my Dahl site. Oh well.)