Review: The Gruffalo’s Child at New Theatre

 

It’s the summer holidays and New Theatre have got your entertainment sorted with The Gruffalo’s Child from Tall Stories! We love going on family theatre trips, and we love The Gruffalo’s Child, so it was win-win for us!

Review: The Gruffalo’s Child at New Theatre

The Gruffalo’s Child is the sequel to the well-known story The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. The story follows the Gruffalo’s child who is determined to discover the whereabouts of the ‘Big Bad Mouse’.

The stage was set with a simple cave shaped rock and trees, and the theatre was buzzing with excited kiddies and their parents. The show began and I was very intrigued to see how three performers could bring the story to life upon the stage.

The costumes were cleverly constructed, with interesting and quirky ways of creating characters with clothing and design. I loved the owl’s costume and I think these kind of creations are really inspiring!

As ever, it’s always quite noisy at family performances, but I think it would have been great if the sound had accommodated this noise level. There were times when I couldn’t hear words being spoken by the cast, which kinda lets the whole performance down.

 

 

I think The Gruffalo’s Child is a hard book to translate to stage. It’s so similar (but not as wonderful) as The Gruffalo, so you feel like you’re seeing a very similar performance. I liked how the story was told, and I really enjoyed the musical/lyrical side of things, but I have to agree with Warren and say it felt like it was missing something.

Georgia Wall played the mouse and generally narrated/moved the performance along. She had a lovely stage presence and her mouse character was really sweet! Althea Burey was the Gruffalo’s Child and she had a lot of energy on stage. Her performance was perfectly childish and energetic; perfect for this role. My favourite performer was Jack Kelly as the Gruffalo/Snake/Owl/Fox and he was wonderful…

I loved his energy as well as his talent. He had the fantastic skill of using a varied amount of accents and personalities, and his change-overs were super fast so I totally applaud that level of commitment. I think he was really engaging and fun to watch!

Overall this adaptation is a little lacklustre and we all felt we wanted a little more from the show as a whole. If you’re a huge fan of this book then you’re sure to enjoy this performance but don’t expect it to blow you away like The Snail and the Whale or Room on the Broom…

 

Don’t forget to check out the review from First Time Valley Mam  🙂