Review – Tickets Gifted¦ “I wanna get ready! I wanna see a dinosaur, WOOHOOOO!!!!” my 4 year old excitedly announced on Tuesday morning. He wasn’t the only one who couldn’t wait to go and see The Great Big Dinosaur Show. We’d all been excited since we received our tickets for it at The Festival Theatre at Hever Castle as we all love the roarsome reptiles (although we certainly wouldn’t want to meet one!)
Arrival
After a rainy but thankfully uneventful journey on the M25, we pulled into Hever Castle’s car park. There we were shown where to park by a helpful member of staff. He seemed jolly despite the rain beating on his umbrella and asked “Are you here for the dinosaur show?” as we got out of the car. “Yes! I don’t know what gave you that impression!” I bantered, gesturing at the children in their dinosaur covered fleeces, as he chuckled in return. The theatre was a short walk down a path framed by some beautiful plants. (I think some with purple flowers may have been rhodedendrons? I’m don’t know, I’m not a plant expert – but they were stunning!) There was a lovely atmosphere and I was pleasantly surprised by the layout of the theatre and delighted that there was a refreshments cabin. Autumn was apprehensive but delighted to be given the responsibility of ringing the bell to tell people to take their seats. Meanwhile, I made a quick dash to said cabin to buy what turned out to be a really delicious hot chocolate with lots of cream on top.
The Great Big Dinosaur Show
We weren’t entirely sure what to expect from the show. We knew it was being brought to us by poet Simon Mole and musician Gecko, so we knew we could anticipate music, poems and dinosaurs. We knew that the poems were likely to be from Simon’s book “A First Book of Dinosaurs”, which the show was based on. Yet, without sounding too skeptical I hope, we weren’t really sure how it was going to fit together or how good it was going to be. We were perplexed further when we received an email ahead of the show requesting that we each bring a (clean) sock!
Dressed in matching dinosaur-print shirts, it wasn’t long after Simon and Gecko’s arrival onto the stage that they burst into the first song. They’d already warmed up the audience by asking our favourite dinosaur and happily when they asked us to sing a line of the song, there was a decent amount of noise (it’s always awkward when hardly anyone in the crowd participates!)
From start to finish, all of us (ages 4-33) had so much fun. Everyone around us, young and old, appeared to be having a fantastic time too! There were facts about dinosaurs wrapped in poetry and song, with a lot of silliness along the way. Lots of crowd participation really made the show and highlights included everyone putting their socks on their hands to be leaf-munching dinosaurs in the Jurassic part of our adventure, as well as an improv song created from a fictional dinosaur made up by children contributing their ideas from the audience. We also loved roaring as loud as we could to save Simon and Gecko from a huge dinosaur in the scary Cretaceous period!
The show was very clever, with no gimmicks being needed. For the most part it was a combination of Simon and Gecko’s interaction with the audience, the talent of Simon’s poetry and Gecko’s music and a whiteboard along with some other props. Yet it was still engaging enough for a generation of children who are obsessed with screens! Our 4 and 8 year old were enthralled the entire time, which is almost unheard of. A nice touch was that some of the humour was aimed more at adults but without being rude (“That’s not a fossil! It’s a perfunctory pebble!”) As for the chicken solo…I was almost crying with laughter. It felt like we’d only been sitting there for 10 minutes when the show ended – it went in such a fast blur of dinosaur-crazed fun! It wasn’t just the children who couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards. My husband and I also kept uttering facts we’d been surprised to learn and recalling our favourite parts of the show!
Whether you’re a dinosaur lover or not, we think this show is brilliant and highly recommend it!
You can see future performance dates and book your tickets here.
Cover photo source: Hugo Glendinning.
Disclosure: We were kindly gifted tickets to The Great Big Dinosaur Show in exchange for writing a review. As always, all thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.