Sesame Street Live - Elmo Makes Music

It’s hard work hiking young kids to the theatre and a lot of parents will understandably be looking for a safe bet, a crowd-pleaser that’s bound to send the kids home happy. Present are a host of familiar characters, lots of song and dance numbers, and the assurance of a professional, technically proficient performance. But it crucially lacks the humour, warmth and wit of the TV show at its best.

It also lacks any puppetry, and arguably it’s not really, truly live. Instead we have a bunch of actors in oversized character costumes, miming to a pre-recorded soundtrack of dialogue and songs. There are moments when the audience are meant to join in, but no opportunity for the actors actually to involve children in a spontaneous or truly interactive way. The stage is elevated quite a long way even from the kids at the front, and the effect is like watching a super-scale, 3-dimensional, singalong DVD. It’s no surprise that many of the toddlers are more interested in the more immediate distractions of popcorn, other children and toys that they’d brought along, than what is happening onstage.

To be fair, some children are inspired to get up and dance towards the end of the show, and young fans at least get to see their favourite characters in the flesh (or perhaps the fur). But with so many more intimate and more truly ‘live’ theatre experiences on offer for kids at the Fringe, it would seem a shame to take them to one that’s as bland and constrained as this.