Capable Child

Look up, look down, the Smartest Giant's in town! Julia Donaldson books are that great combination of utterly brilliant stories, exceptionally clever rhymes and little repetitive hooks. So when you are a 3 year old fan of The Smartest Giant in Town and your mum and dad know the book almost word for word, you want the stage show to be true to the book. In this case Fierylight and Little Angel Theatre get this spot on. When George the Giant stepped onto the stage of Lichfield Garrick Theatre, his costume was just like the book and so was what he said. I knew we were in for a great show and the smile on my preschooler's face confirmed it. The Smartest Giant had a clever mix of actors and puppetry for the animals. We loved the part where George got fitted out for his new clothes. It was very funny with some great jokes for the parents from 'French speaking' Simone who threw out some French vocab: 'pret a manger,' 'JoJo BeBe Maman' to convince us of her coutu...

Looking around the auditorium of Lichfield’s Garrick Theatre, my daughter and I could see any number of small (but fairly fierce looking) pirates. However, in between them we could see one lad clutching his copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’. A classic children’s tale of adventure, piracy and derring-do, we were about to meet Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver and, quite randomly, Captain Birdseye of ‘fish finger’ fame (although it was quite disturbing to discover during the show that fish fingers are actually comprised of pirates that have crossed the white bearded grandfather figure of my youth). This was Le Navet Bete’s comical adaptation of the classic novel after all! Exeter-based, 4-man Le Navet Bete are currently touring the country and my 9 year old daughter and I managed to catch them as they passed through the Midlands. The show was full of laughs, with a few of the original characters and some additional ones too. Long John Silver’s parrot had been renamed ‘Alexa’...