Fifi, Anya and I went to watch 奇幻海洋 on Saturday at the Esplanade. This play was performed in English last June and had pretty good reviews (the photos below are from that June performance. The one we watched was in Chinese and had Chinese actors). But I really didn’t enjoy it at all and I think Anya didn’t like it as much as The Magic Treetop that we watched last month. Firstly, unlike The Magic Treetop, there wasn’t any sort of a main plot holding the play together. There were a few things going on: a turtle was trying to find a place to lay her eggs, a shark wanted to make friends with some fish and there was a crab clearing rubbish and looking for a new shell. But there was nothing resembling a decent storyline.

Secondly, many children in the audience were completely out of control!! There wasn’t a raised performance area so while there were certain parts during the play where interaction was allowed and encouraged, kids were running around the performance area even when they weren’t supposed to! And the parents did nothing! I saw some kids getting in the way of the actors and the ushers trying desperately to get them to sit down while the parents just looked on adoringly with this “Oh look how much energy and initiative my kid has!” expression on their faces! There was this kid who ran out and clung onto the leg of one of the actors! And some kid stepped all over Fifi’s bag while trying to touch some sea creature. The kids were really rough and were grabbing at things and destroying the props. There was a stingray made of wire and some filmy material and the kids totally bent it out of shape and tore the material! I could feel my blood pressure rising steadily. ;(

Anya liked the bit about the turtle trying to lay eggs (she really loves eggs lah) and the jellyfish but was scared of the whale. She didn’t have very much to say about the rest of the play. I really hope the next one we go to is better and has a proper performance area so kids don’t run amok!

We went to watch ‘The Magic Treetop’ at the Esplanade today. It was much better than the previous PLAYtime! performance ‘The Kingdom under the Bed’ which we watched last October. The play was about a squirrel who took a robin’s egg thinking that it was a big nut and how the robin tried to get her egg back. The performance area was Y-shaped which meant that more kids could get up close to the action. There was a lot more interaction with the audience than that previous play we watched. There were ‘fireflies’ that ‘flew’ over the audience and ‘clouds’ that ‘floated’ by. The kids in the audience were also involved in gathering acorns for the squirrel and pasting coloured dots on a chameleon. There were spelling bees which flew around spelling words and the moral of the story was about being kind to others and doing the right thing. I thought it was very interesting and I think Anya enjoyed most of it though she was a bit clingy cos she didn’t nap and was very tired. I hope ‘The Magic Ocean’ that we’re watching next month will be as good (even though it’s in Mandarin which Anya doesn’t really understand)!

Ok, I still need to complain a bit about some of the parents and kids there. The two girls beside Anya kept shushing her BEFORE the play started which was a bit ridiculous. One of the girls also ‘stole’ a coloured dot from another girl and I had to ask her to return it. Her mother was seated somewhere at the back. Also don’t understand why parents don’t ensure that their kids behave!! I saw a boy tearing off a bit of the cloud floating by and after the play, there were kids pulling bits of the set off and the parents just didn’t care!!