Octonauts and the Deep Sea Volcano Adventure Review
Octonauts and the Deep Sea Volcano Adventure
Cliffs Pavilion, Southend
27-28 May 2015
Reviewed by Helen Dewdney
A friend and I took our two seven year olds to see Octonauts and the Deep Sea Volcano Adventure the live show on stage at the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend during the May half term school holiday.
Although the Octonauts is mainly for pre-schoolers it is the one CBeebies programme that my son still likes. All the characters from the programme are there, but disappointingly the voices aren’t the same. Kwazi was just plain wrong. He sounded more like Joe Pasquale than Kwazi. Peso was near the right voice (and very cute he got quite a cheer from the audience and I’m not sure it was just the kids!). The children didn’t seem to mind, but when asked they both said the voices were wrong and led to a discussion about which ones were the most unlike the “real” ones. For such familiar characters to look at, as was the Octopod scenery this really was a shame and unexpected. When the characters were puppets (rod) it was difficult to tell which character was talking as one couldn’t recognise voices and it wasn’t clear which one was speaking as it was when the dressed up characters spoke. This didn’t seem to matter to the children though. The costumes were good and just like their cartoon counterparts. Lots of humour, audience participation, singing, actions, clapping and answering calls which the children enjoyed. The story was simple enough for very young children to follow but not so basic that the older ones got bored. The show was good fun and engaging and the children absolutely loved it. Lots of familiarity with stories and characters from the books and programmes. Tension was gained throughout the story and you did wonder if Captain Barnacles was going to be ok!
The show was an hour long with a twenty minute interval. It really slapped of having a break to fleece more money from customers on ice creams! Children were thoroughly engaged in the show and this break is just not needed.
Puppets were a nice touch, but they really needed to be bigger. Young children need/want big and recognisable but sadly the gups and Octonaut characters were too small in design. We were in the stalls row T and could hardly see the faces of the characters and the gups just looked like cardboard cut outs. Some of the animals were great though, the siphonophore in particular. It was a shame that you could see the puppeteers at times which even the children noticed but that goes with the territory perhaps and I don’t suppose the younger children saw them and for the older ones it just gave me an opportunity to explain how puppeteers work.
However I don’t think the show was as good as I expected it to be for the price. Size of puppets and no special effects or expensive/elaborate costumes for such a short show was not reflected in the price. The show was only on for two days at Southend and the theatre was only two thirds full so think this was an indication of price too. Had the price been a little lower I think more people would attend frankly. For a show much less than half the length and with none of the technical, costume and staging costs of a West End show the Octonauts should be a lot less than its near half price of one!
Full marks to the sound technicians. The levels on everything were spot on. Often you can go to the theatre and obviously it is loud but sometimes you can’t actually hear the words of some fantastic singers because the technical side is poor and that includes in the West End. Here though, I heard every word.
At the beginning of the show the audience are cadets and at the end become fully fledged Octonauts which is a nice touch. No need for the human cadet in my opinion, no narration was needed and all other characters are so familiar to children with most of them having the toys these characters really seemed surplus to requirements. They aren’t there in the books or programme so why in the show?
The children loved it which is the important thing. However there are certainly areas for improvement and the cost is not reflective of the show and so I have to take away one of the stars that the boys gave it!
Rating: 4/5
The Octopod has now departed from Southend but continues its tour until 5 July 2015. For more information, tour dates, venues or to book tickets visit www.octonautslive.co.uk.
For other shows at the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend visit www.southendtheatres.org.uk.
Cliffs Pavilion, Station Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS0 7RA | 01702 351135
