Hungry letterbox and partying tomcat bound to enchant

Capital E artistic director Peter Wilson has brought his puppetry skills to theatres around the world. Picture / Mark Coote

Readers of Jenny Pattrick's best-selling novels may be surprised to find she is also a talented writer of children's musicals.

The woman behind The Denniston Rose and In Touch with Grace was writing children's shows with her husband Laughton, accomplished musician, music teacher and theatre musical director, long before she started working on adult fiction. She is the lyricist; he composes the music.

"It's always nice to surprise people," says Pattrick, who trained as a teacher before becoming a mother of three and starting a career as a jeweller.

Aucklanders get to see a Pattrick show when the Capital E National Theatre for Children brings On Our Street from Wellington to the Herald Theatre from tomorrow.

Founded in 1997, Capital E is New Zealand's only professional theatre company for children and creates work for pre-schoolers as well as their older brothers and sisters.

On Our Street, a 45-minute production, starts off as an ordinary day in a typical neighbourhood but an all-singing anddancing fantasy world peopled by crazy characters and puppets slowly emerges from snap-shot stories about the residents, pets, objects, sights and sounds around us.

Children meet a hungry letterbox that waits to chew up mail, a girl makes friends with her scary neighbour, and an alley cat invites his pals round for a dinner party.

"We had a tomcat in our neighbourhood which sat up on a fence making a lot of din so that's where the inspiration for that scene comes from," says Laughton. "It's a rather jazzy song, too."

Capital E National Theatre for Children toured On Our Street around five years ago but artistic director Peter Wilson says there is a new generation of 3-7 year olds who will enjoy it.

Wilson, who specialises in puppetry and theatre illusion, has worked all over the world from Moscow's Central Puppet Theatre to the National Theatre School in Tokyo.

He says Capital E has been fortunate to work on several occasions with the Pattricks, who understand the demands of creating work which will enchant and captivate young theatre-goers.

The Pattricks penned their first children's musical Rats, in 1981.

"We work well together," Laughton says. "I'll say, 'give me some words' and Jenny sits in her office at the end of the corridor and I'll be in mine at the other end. She brings me two or three lines and that's all I need to hear what the rhythm is and the possibility for music."

Since then, they have written Solomon and the Magic Teeth, Turangawaewae, The Farm at the End of the Road and On Our Street specifically for children.

* On Our Street, Herald Theatre, August 10-16, 9.45 am & 11.15am; Aug 12 & 13, 11am & 2pm; no show Friday, August 11