Sam McBratney’s best-selling children’s book (first published in 1994) “Guess How Much I Love You” has been brought to life by the Selladoor family in this live action adventure with Little & Big Nutbrown Hare in this magical journey through the seasons.
Before the story starts “Mother Nature” - a woman in dungarees - is walking around the set waving at the young enthusiastic audience. With four young nieces (ranging in age from five days old to eight years old), I’m familiar with the book and know that there are no human characters within it so along with confusing myself this part also confused the young audience (most who thought the story - a rather short one at that) was going to be the 50 minute long stage production. However the story, if you can call it that as for something aimed at children aged 3 plus, there didn’t seem to be much of a story, just Little and Big Nutbrown Hare witnessing the change of seasons as Mother Nature taught the audience about the changing seasons, from tadpoles turning into frogs, caterpillars transforming into beautiful butterflies, acorns growing into trees, autumn leaves falling from trees and the first fall of winter snow.
All this was achieved by Mother Nature and the clever use of puppets and simple, colourful yet effective set which resembled a life-size pop-up book. Throughout the changing seasons we saw Big and Little say several good nights to each other as the sun set on another day, ending their day by telling each other how much they love each other - each time Big Hare going slightly bigger with his expression of love for Little Hare “I love you to the moon” says Little Hare “I love you to the moon....and back!” replied Big Hare.
There’s some gentle almost hypnotic lullaby type songs throughout the production with some more upbeat songs where the cast of three try to get the audience to join in with the repetitive lyrics and dance moves (which aren’t really suitable to do in a seated position). On this particular occasion their attempts were fairly unsuccessful and by this point the young audience was struggling to maintain their concentration (about 95% of today’s audience were made up of one or two Primary school classes - at a guess I’d say reception class so aged 4-5, along with approximately three separate parents with one child, myself, my mother and my three year old niece) - all of which found the 50 minute production with no interval, a little too long to maintain their interest with the majority becoming fidgety.
Whilst I cannot fault the overall production which was beautifully done; compared to a recent trip to Peppa Pig live with a three year old boy as my mini judge so to speak, this production felt more like a bedtime story (which funnily enough if you ask most parents, grandparents etc is usually what they use the best-selling book as) making most of the audience either fidgety or falling to sleep. At first my niece was loving seeing the realistic “bunny rabbits” up close (so much so I thought at one point she was going to run up the aisle to get even closer!) but within about fifteen minutes she was starting to get restless as compared to other live action productions she’s been to, this one sadly did not have quite enough audience interaction.
However despite this she was still super excited to tell her mummy, daddy and five day old sister all about it afterwards so it obviously wasn’t a total waste of an afternoon treat out. We particularly loved the fantastic range of merchandise available to buy featuring the two well-loved hares and of course she loved choosing out her own treat and something for her baby sister!
A must see for anyone who’s read the book. I’d love more productions based on the books, but only if a little bit more audience interaction is added to the mix.
Reviewer - Lottie Davis-Browne
on - 12/10/18
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