Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Sam Angell, Melissa Lowe, Charley Magalit, Nana Amoo-Gottfried, Celia Francis, Robert Penny.
An acrobatic skill weaved around one of the most beloved children’s books and characters to come out of America in the last 100 years, a set of beautiful nonsense in exacting verse and perhaps the first pull of the magic that is theatre, Dr. Seuss’ The Cat In The Hat is not just meant to inspire young minds, it allows them free range to see the world as a place in which the creativity that is possible goes hand in hand with anarchy and order, that learning can be fun rather than insipid, dull and routine.
Such is the world of literature that anything it seems can be turned into a play in the modern world, but not everything can be seen as a playground, a canvas into which anarchy is painted with rhyme and intended, planned revolution, for surely that is what Dr. Seuss intended when challenged to create a set of books that would give children a greater sense of the world that the torrid, almost beige middle-class sense of superiority that the banal ladybird books of Post-war suburbia were likely to bore children with.
In Association with the National Centre For Circus Arts, Curve & Rose Theatre Kingston have produced a spectacle of performance which certainly grabs the attention of the younger members of the audience that will come to the Playhouse Theatre, but also place a huge smile upon the face of the parents, caregivers and guardians of those children. The Cat In The Hat has that rare magic placed within it, the power to charm, to ignite a sense of belief, or even to break down the walls of adult logic, the long years of built up silent lucidity, all removed with just a single moment of un-claused rhyme and acrobatic delivery.
The sense of happiness and wonder flowed over the audience as Nana Amoo-Gottfried’s Cat in the Hat brought chaos to the lives of Boy and his big sister Sally, a boring, rainy, dull day swept along in a tidal wave of pandemonium and commotion, albeit with the very best of intentions.
The Cat In The Hat is beloved for a reason, it allows children to see beyond the dull yardstick of conformity that so many books of that particular time tried to install into their minds, to bring it to life as a play takes just as much dedication and sense of wonder, and it is one that is readily accepted and enjoyed for being true to the source material. A distinct pleasure for all.
Ian D. Hall