What: Snake and Lizard
Where and when: PumpHouse Theatre, Takapuna, Sep 28-Oct 10
What: Jack and the Beanstalk
Where and when: Bruce Mason Centre, Takapuna, Sep 28-Oct 2
What: The Bubbles & Mustard Show
Where and when: Wintergarden, The Civic, Oct 5-10
Auckland's leading children's theatre companies celebrate major milestones with their new school holiday productions.
Phineas Phrog presents a new show specially commissioned by The Edge, while at the PumpHouse Theatre Tim Bray Productions stages its 50th show.
Written and directed by Phineas Phrog founder Sarah Somerville, The Bubbles and Mustard Show is the company's first full-length original piece for children. Commissioned by The Edge for its Time Out Theatre for Children programme, which aims to offer high-quality family shows during the school holidays, it will be performed at the Wintergarden Theatre under the Civic.
Bubbles and Mustard takes its young audiences on a guided tour of a radio station, led by guide Olive Olsen (Somerville) to meet a goldfish named Bubbles and a mouse called Mustard.
But Olive finds the entire station staff is sick, apart from Ed (Tana Jarman) the messenger boy and Max (Julian Wilson) the boss. It means the young theatre-goers must make the sounds and keep the radio station on air.
Somerville has long wanted to write a children's show incorporating sound effects and demonstrating how various noises are made. She thought a radio station would be an ideal location.
"I know kids don't sit around listening to the radio any more so I wrote in animals that they are familiar with and humorous characters, like Ed who is always making wacky sandwiches which are what gives the crew food poisoning."
The Edge public programmes producer Bronwyn Bent says the show is a chance to see Phineas Phrog performing quite different work to the traditional fairy tales it is known for.
However, Somerville has included many of the features Phineas Phrog audiences enjoy, including humour aimed at kids and adults alike, larger-than-life characters in bright costumes and the chance to join in.
The company also puts a New Zealand twist on Jack and the Beanstalk, with a modern Jack who loves telling jokes and Daisy the cow.
"It's going to be a very busy time for us, but that's good," says Somerville, who is also organising school holiday shows at Auckland Zoo.
Meanwhile a contemporary New Zealand story gets a theatrical twist courtesy of Tim Bray Productions.
The company has taken the award-winning children's short story collection Snake and Lizard and turned it into a musical featuring Tim Rabie as Lizard, Denise Snoad as Snake, and Madeleine Lynch and Adam Burrell as a collection of other characters and puppeteers.
The show is based on the book by Joy Cowley and illustrated by Gavin Bishop which won the 2008 New Zealand Post Children's book of the Year and the Junior Fiction award.
Set in the Arizona desert, the story is about two unlikely best friends. The elegant and calm Snake and the excitable and unruly Lizard see past their differences to embark on adventures.
Cowley based the stories on herself and her husband Terry and in one of her regular letters to young readers, she wrote of their relationship: "We are very different, opposite in fact, but Terry is also my closest friend. He is the part of me that is missing and I think I also complete him. We work very well together but sometimes, with our different viewpoints, we have funny arguments. Terry is Snake in the book. I am Lizard."
Snake and Lizard is the 50th show Tim Bray Productions has staged since 1991. Bray says all the actors in this show had to audition, which allows him to discover new actors. The four cast members in the anniversary show have performed with Bray before; indeed Tim Rabie was in the first show.
Children's theatre often requires cast and crew to multi-task. Lynch recalls having to crouch behind a table to act as puppeteer for "porridge puppets" in Goldilocks and the Three Bears while also doing the lighting.
"One of the puppets fell off and I got the giggles," she says. And the giggles are what keep Snoad coming back as a regular in Bray's shows. The duo met playing Basil and Sybil Fawlty in dinner theatre productions of Fawlty Towers.
"I love Tim's laugh. He laughs like a little boy. He has such joy and enthusiasm, which is what children's theatre is all about."
