I’ve just put my son to bed having seen The Cat in the Hat at the Oxford Playhouse earlier today and he’s still buzzing about it! Talking about the story, asking questions about it and trying to recreate the acrobatics (eep!)… Most days he can’t even remember what we’ve done in the morning so this feels pretty special.
And I can see why. Firstly, the show is very faithful to the original which I was really pleased about – you can’t really improve on The Cat on the Hat after all! The set is recognisable from the book and so are some of the objects. My son was delighted with this – we’ve been reading the book a lot this week to prep him and he enjoyed spotting things throughout the show.
All the book is there, plus some songs and awesome acrobatics (watch out for the girl doing the splits in mid air between two chairs!). The whole show is really high energy which I think is why my son remained glued to it.
There are six characters – the children, the cat, the fish (thought it was really clever to make this a person especially as she rolls around the stage in a giant zorb!) and Thing One and Thing Two. They were all very entertaining but for us Thing One and Thing Two stole the show. They were amazing, totally bonkers and funny, flipping and bouncing around the stage.
The show is two lots of 45 minutes with an interval in between. At half time we went up to the bar on the first floor which I think must be a bit of a hidden treasure as we had it almost to ourselves. There’s a good play area up there with loads of toys, comfy (and very stylish) sofas and loads of nice big windows.
The bar serves hot drinks, cold drinks and all the alcohol. The bartender put my son’s drink in a coffee cup with a lid to prevent spillages which I thought was a really nice child-friendly touch.
After the show there were loads of free (drop-in) activities for kids happening on the top floor of the theatre. These will be running after both performances (starting 11.00 and 2.30) on Thursday and Friday. We made a little stripey cat hat and did some colouring of a picture of The Cat in the Hat.
There was also a trail to find fun facts about The Cat in the Hat around the Playhouse – we did a few of these but my son (3) was a bit little for it as the trivia went over his head. I found them interesting though! For example Dr Suess’ phone number happened to be very similar to the local fishmonger so he used to get calls from people wanting to order fish. He would take their details and send them drawings of fish instead… Bet they’d be worth a pretty penny now!
The show is brilliant and it’s running til Saturday. There are tickets left for all performances at the moment according to their website. For more info, go here.
**We were given free tickets for this show but the above is my honest opinion. I would never recommend anything I didn’t think was amazing.**
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