Reviewed by Amanda Hayes
My 5-year-old son is now a confirmed theatre lover thanks to The Hawth in Crawley and so was very excited to hear that we were going to see a play set in a rainforest called Stories on a String.
The Hawth itself is easy to get to and has plenty of free parking right outside, a well-stocked café, and easy access for the disabled so is one of our favourite theatres.
The show was held in the studio, a small intimate theatre, so after grabbing our free booster seat we took our seats near the back, it’s a brilliant space for this sort of production as the children can get really close. As we entered the foyer you could literally feel the excitement bubbling as it filled with small children and their families waiting for the performance to begin.
Present by Dotted Line Theatre & Polyglot Arts the story is unfortunately a sad sign of modern times as City girl Jacinda, a gorgeous puppet, is obsessed with her phone and can’t go anywhere without it. Caught out in downtown Sao Paulo by her parents Jacinda gets sent to her grandmothers for the summer, deep in the Amazon jungle. Jacinda tells her Grandma she is bored and after watching her obsessing with her phone, Grandma sends her on a long journey to meet her cousin in the rainforest with a quest to bring back some herbal remedies for her ailing legs. After a long journey Jacinda finds herself lost in the jungle and with no phone signal and no WiFi and her adventure begins.
With lots of Brazilian music, singing and instruments together with jungle sound effects Stories on a String certainly kept the audience enthralled. Audience participation came in the form of learning some Portuguese words which were then put together in a song which was very interesting and unusual.
The performance lasted around an hour without an interval and was just about the right length for a younger audience. It was certainly an hour well spent and it was a joy to see so many happy faces. At the end of the show we were invited out to the foyer to see and smell all the herbal remedies brought back from Brazil which my son loved.
Stories on a String is a must see for any family, although marketed for children aged 6 and above younger children will delight in the music even if they don’t really understand the story. It’s fun, musical and unusual and will delight any young child.
Rating: 5/5
For other shows at The Hawth in Crawley visit hawth.co.uk or call the box office on 01293 553636.
The Hawth, Hawth Avenue, Crawley, Sussex, RH10 6YZ | 01293 553636
