Review: The Gruffalo Live

I was wandering around London Zoo once, before I had kids of my own, and witnessed a small child having a tantrum. ‘DON’T WANT SLOW LORIS, WANT GRUFFALO!’ he protested loudly.

What on earth is a Gruffalo? I wondered. And for that matter, what the hell is a Slow Loris, too?

A bit of investigation solved the Slow Loris question. But I remained unsure about the Gruffalo until a few years later, when Seb received the answer in book form. That zoo tantrum suddenly made sense. It turns out that the majority of small children are quite keen on seeing the Gruffalo, even if he is just a little bit scary.

This weekend, we all sat in the Vaudeville theatre waiting to see just that.

The Gruffalo Live, a Tall Stories adaptation of the book, is showing from 15th December until the 3rd of January 2016. With a cast of three, the tale is brought to life through the words of ‘the storyteller’ and the well known Mouse, Fox, Owl, Snake and Gruffalo himself. The way that the cast adapt to portray each of the different characters was really well done – we all particularly loved the snake, who had a very entertaining song and a silly manner that had all the kids and adults alike laughing. We were sat in the dress circle, and I did find it a little difficult to make out the features of the Mouse from that far away; the kids were amazed to see the tiny red binoculars that you could hire for £1 though and made good use of them to see the characters in close up.

The show runs for 55 minutes with no interval, and just like in the story, the Gruffalo takes a while to actually show up. The characters built the anticipation well, but both older kids at times did get a bit wriggly during the songs – I think a couple of them could have been a bit shorter. Aside from that there was plenty to keep them transfixed, with a bit of pantomime humour and audience participation thrown in, and a very exciting moment where the Gruffalo leapt off the stage and into the audience!

Talking of the Gruffalo, we were all kind of expecting the Gruffalo that we have seen before – with a smooth brown coat interspersed with prickles. The Gruffalo we were presented with looked like much more of a home craft project, with a suit made from shaggy strips of fabric in varying brownish colours. It actually fit very well with the interpretive nature of the show as a whole, and despite the Gruffalo ‘changing his coat’ the kids absolutely loved him.

As a family show, it was really well done – a definite hit for young children aged between about 3 and 7. Bigger family members will appreciate the clever props and humourous depiction of the characters too. Well worth the ticket price of £60 for a family of four (individual tickets start from £13 and babies in arms under 18 months are free).