Family theatre

Today we have all been to the Lowry to see The Gruffalo's Child. It was an hour long dramatisation of one of the many excellent children's books by Julia Donaldson. We had lovely seats in the Circle and all three little Braithwaites stayed the course, didn't get scared and didn't talk all the way through it. If only that could be said for the rest of the audience.

Suffice to say it was a noisy experience. There was some pantomime style audience participation which was pretty funny and a couple of good songs but us two old fogeys would definitely have preferred it if there hadn't been quite so many noisy kids there. Okay, okay, it was a play for children. Goes with the territory.

The cast of three were all very good and the chap who played the Gruffalo, the Snake, the Owl and the Fox was particularly impressive. I was a bit disappointed by the costumes as I had kind of expected them to be in full animal gear but the costume for the snake, owl, fox and mouse were all only suggestive of animal characteristics (the mouse had a tail, the owl had a cardigan with a few feathers stuck on). I guess it was a good lesson for young theatre-goers but not quite the full monty effort I had been looking forward too. Chris was pretty unimpressed by the immobile Gruffalo, but none of our quibbles seemed to bother the kids. In the end, Dominic announced that it was far too short - so I think that says it all.