Of late I have been happy to watch the latest uploads to Little Angel Theatre's YouTube channel, sometimes with my nephew (8) and sometimes with my neice (6), and up until this point have always been very complimetary about what they produce online during the lockdown months.
This time however, I am sorry to say, was not at all a happy experience, and the show was far too dark and scary for the young girl, and the 8 year boy just thought it was daft and didin't really understand it.
Allow me to explain. First of all the story was told using the show's creator, Matthew Robins, seated at the keyboards playing and singing the story as we went along, whilst some of the time we were shown this, some of the time we were shown Tim Spooner "behind-the-scenes" working the projector and the cards, whilst only some of the time did we actually see the actual show itself. The show itself however was not the kind of presentation suitable in any way for a young audience. Stylised in a very 1920's, Black and White cardboard cut-out way - think Tim Burton meets The 1921 Theatre Company - the images were grotesque and scary at best. Flyboy, the protagonist and the robot, our hero, were the scariest and wierdest two creatures in the whole story.
Moreover the story was long and complicated and involved a nasty and vindictive brother breaking the flyboy's toy dinosaur, the robot getting almost eaten by the crocodiles at the zoo and an angry pack of wolves surrounding a group of boys on a football pitch. Not the gentle story-time flavour of all previous Little Angel fayre at all.
Robins's piano playing was also drowning out much of the lyrics (hence my nephew not really following the story), but perhaps in retrospect that wasn't a bad thing!
I have been an avid fan of the work of Little Angel Theatre to date, but sadly this has to be one of the worst and most misrepresented shows for young children I have ever seen. Not happy, not fun, far too adult, far too stylistic, and I came away with two crying and upset children.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 9/8/20
No comments:
Post a Comment