It’s a grey day for Katie, and she goes looking for colour. ‘Green’ arrives, in the shape of a caterpillar, and its song about vegetables and vegetation. ‘It’s so good to be green’, is an early everybody-join-in song which everyone duly does. ‘Yellow’ soon arrives in the form of flowers and sunshine. ‘Blue’ in the form of a lovely lion, oh... and the passing police car lights on the road outside and its siren (the venue is in a tent on a busy central Brighton junction).
Throughout the show, the young children seemed rapt with the slow paced plot. There are some lovely puppets. A busy bee with flapping wings; sweet hand-puppet flowers; a blue lion; some cheeky pink mice; a red bus. Just like the lion, the songs are tame, sweet and safe – the audience just rescued from boredom by each new puppet revelation. Mothers cooing loudly when a pink banner, celebrating ‘Pink!’ is revealed.
The show is pleasant and charming. Nothing much happens, your child is not overly challenged, making it work only for very little ones. My daughter, who is six, sat through it and enjoyed it, although she later concluded she thought she was too old for it (which perhaps isn’t Long Nose Puppets fault.)
There’s a charming finale, and with a modest whiz and a bang the set transforms as does Katie and her caterpillar friend who are joined by even more colourful friends!
It is perhaps unfortunate for Long Nose Puppets that last time I took my daughter to see them (playing Shoe Baby), when she was about 3, we had just seen another show that was laced with intelligent plot, characters and live music, which she talked about incessantly afterwards. Even as a toddler, she revelled in that. After Shoe Baby, she hardly mentioned the show again, or could remember anything about it.
Although such material might have its place, like Shoe Baby, Flyaway Katie is more like ‘mind candy’, lulling, to keep toddlers busy and quiet.
Also, as the soundtrack – including the actual speech of the show – seems to be all pre-recorded, the cast do not interact with anything that happens in real time in the space, or the children. Indeed the passing police car and its siren could have been incorporated and responded to. But the pre-recorded soundtrack doesn’t make space for that. It’s more like watching a video. Risking a divergence from this format might be worth exploring. Children love proper interaction, to be engaged, and if the meet-and-greet at the end upstages the actual show, perhaps it’s time to have a little re-think?
