STAGE

Furry Friends: On the stage where one expects the great plays of Shakespeare, Chekhov and Arthur Miller, audiences instead are finding a mole, a rat, a badger and a toad. “The Wind in the Willows,” adapted by Alan Bennett from the much-loved Kenneth Grahame book, has, since its opening Dec. 12, provided the National Theater in London with the kind of smash usually associated with big West End musicals. The play charts the burgeoning friendships of four furry and scaly creatures whose lessons for humanity are clear. Toad, the mansion-owning braggart, learns modesty, even as Rat and Mole cross social and class barriers to strike up an enduring friendship.