Years before death or taxes become a concern, one inevitability of life seems to be the cartoon ‘Peppa Pig’, which is so inescapably popular amongst pre-schoolers that I swear my son somehow got into it without us ever actually showing it to him.
Following the crudely drawn adventures of brattish porcine Peppa, her little brother George, their family, and their friends (a random selection of alliteratively named animals: eg Pedro Pony, Susie Sheep), it is pretty much a given that any shop you might visit will have some sort of Peppa-themed merch, be it pasta shapes, toothpaste or magazines.
Also inevitable is a stage show, in this case ‘Peppa Pig’s Surprise’, which pitches up at the Phoenix Theatre for the holidays with a puppet rendition of the little beast’s adventures.
I’m going to be absolutely honest with you: I thought it was pretty terrible. The production values are low, the voices are unconvincing, it lacks the slightly weird humour of the show, and doesn’t even bother trying to reproduce such quirks as the the fact everyone lives on improbably steep hills, or their falling over laughing at the slightest provocation. Episodes of ‘Peppa…’ are about five minutes a go; this is almost 90 minutes, padded out by endless song routines, mostly led by Daisy (Emma Grace Arends), a sort of horribly perky human interlocutor added to the story as a go-between twixt the puppets and us. At one point there is a dance routine, which would straight up never happen in the cartoon. And the fact that *SPOILER ALERT* the surprise is a trip to the seaside should prepare you for exactly how carefully tailored for Christmas this show isn’t (*FURTHER SPOILER ALERT* they do at least eventually acknowledge this and trundle Santa on for the last minute). There is much, much better kids’ theatre out there, and clearly this could have been done much, much better. That said, there really isn’t a lot of theatre for pre-schoolers – so at least this is something.
But more to the point, it’s not really made for me, and while I generally think it’s a cop-out to note that ‘the audience seemed to enjoy it’, the fact is that my son was so devastated when it ended that he burst into hot, hysterical tears. Now that’s REAL criticism.