Theatre Review – Room on The Broom

With the Christmas season around the corner,  I am pleased to have a some kids theatre reviews for you here. Going to the theatre at this time of year is such a special part of Christmas. And it is something that we always did when I was a child – be it a panto or a musical or a children’s show. This is something that I am keen to do with my children and already we have some tickets booked for our local children’s theatre, as well as for Peppa Pig on stage.

But in the meantime, to get you all excited about Christmas and what’s on, check out this  guest review by the gorgeous @SW19Treasures who blogs at Style Anthology (they already did a Ben & Holly Live review for us!)

2 trips to the Theatre in as many weeks for my 3 year old daughter! I wonder if she knows she is very lucky?

Yesterday we went to The Rose Theatre in Kingston to see “Room on the Broom”. The Rose is an interesting theatre in itself, offering you the option of “cheap” cushions to sit on in the pit area. We were sitting in the front row but every time the cast broke into song, my daughter was up, dancing away.

We love this story by Alex Sclheffer and Julia Donaldson and the stage adaptation by Tall Stories was excellent. The rather scatty and very well spoken witch was not scary in the least for the children, we thought there was definitely a bit of a Mary Poppins thing about her. The witch was flying off to slay a dragon (who turned out to be very, very Welsh!) and on her way she lost several witchy possessions and collected a few friends. The shaggy dog was adorable and  the smart talking, Country and Western singing frog was unexpected and hilarious. The green bird completely fascinated them. The children loved these puppets and were screaming with laughter at their antics. The witch’s ginger cat was not quite so impressed with the new broom crew but in the end the cat and friends scared off the dragon (and can I just say again that the dragon was brilliantly Welsh).

There were 4 actors in this play and it worked superbly well. We have previously seen “The Whale and The Snail” and at the end my daughter asked where the snail was and when was she going to see the whale? Not the best production ever! But with this play, there were no such concerns, lots of songs and music captured the attention of the very young audience and a good dose of loud snoring at the beginning had them howling in the aisles with laughter.

I was at the theatre with children aged 3 and they all understood the story. The on stage antics did not rigidly follow the book, which in some cases seemed a shame but in other ways, it gave the cast the opportunity to create fabulous characters. There were a lot of school parties in the audience and I think they looked about 5 years old and they really did have a fantastic afternoon.

Definitely worth a visit and worthy of a 9/10

And watch the trailer:

We would love to see this!  And It is a definite must for this Christmas!