Room on the Broom at the theatre

We headed off this afternoon to see an adaptation of Julia Donaldson's Room on the Broom at the Lyric Theatre.  Littl'un knows the story well so was very excited about the prospect of going to the theatre with mummy and grandma and out for a birthday tea with the rest of the family afterwards.

The production is 50 minutes long - with no interval - and basically involves 4 actors singing and dancing their way through the story.   They have padded out the plot a little by tagging on the beginning and the end a story of four friends camping who see the witch flying over.

Overall, it's a great production but as the appearance of the dog, the bird and the frog is pretty repetitive and there was almost no interaction with the audience in this first part, littl'un and quite a lot of other children were beginning to get restless after about 25 minutes.

The appearance of the dragon woke them all back up again and the faster pace and greater involvement of the children in the second half kept them all on the edge of their seats right up until the end when the whole audience helped cast the "Iggerty ziggerty zaggerty zoom" spell that creates the witch's fabulous new broom with "a seat for the witch and the the cat and the dog, a nest for the bird and a shower for the frog!"

All in all it was a very enjoyable afternoon - much cake consumed! - and I would definitely recommend the production but it could have been improved by lopping the strange start and end which I don't think the children really got and increasing the interaction with the audience.

We're now really looking forward to the new TV film of the book that will be showing on BBC1 Christmas Day with the fabulous Gillian Anderson as the witch.

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This is a completely independent review which I've written for no other reason than to share what we've been up to.  We weren't asked to review this and weren't compensated for doing so :-)