Zog Live Tour 2019 – Review!
Freckle Theatre Company have done it again! They’ve brought to glorious and technicolour life a much loved story by Julia Donaldson and more to that, the illustrations of Alex Sheffler! Zog Live is every bit as good as I’d hoped it would be and with a tweak here and a plump there, the wonderful tale that I often read to my children at bed time played out before us to many smiles and clap alongs from Raffie!
We invited friends of ours to join us, a little girl who has one year maturity on the little Raffster and I’d say she was just perfect for soaking up the magic of Zog Live on stage. Raffie loved it too of course and sat for a good 45 minutes of the show mesmerise before he decided he would actually like to run around and I’d say that’s some going when you manage to capture the attention span of a 16 month old for as long as they did!
Beautiful puppetry mixes with human acting (and when I say human I of course mean dragon) to tell the story of how Zog finishes dragon school gaining a gold star! Some of his lessons are teaching him how to breathe fire or fly but Zog isn’t a magnificently fast learner so it’s somewhat of a surprise when he rescues the Princess! Rescues a Princess? Is this where Zog Live ends? Oh no… No Princess worth her salt would allow a story to finish at her being rescued… Princesses, you see, are quite capable of rescuing Knights and dragons and being quite wonderful on their own… Watch and you’ll see how to story ends!
We loved how colourful the set is and the minimalist setting merged with the musicians perfectly as the actors performed and took the helm from everything down to the playing of the instruments! Some really well rehearsed scenes saw perfect steps in the choreography and a cast who rubbed together like cogs on a mission! They were all excellent and I think all five actors stood out for differing reasons!
The music too of course is rather enchanting – all written by Johnny Flynn who my good friend Katy Earley informs me is one of her favourite musicians and she’s, well… She’s a bit f a coolio so I’d say she’s right! He’s certainly done a lovely job here and I was impressed that the songs weren’t simple plinky plonk memorable tunes but built with strong harmonies and they felt robust. I LOVE this type of theatre and the show reminded me of Stick Man (my fave) which is also produced and performed by Freckle. I chose not to take the big kids to this one as thought some time for just me and the baby would be lovely but actually, I really wish they’d come now as they would have loved it! I might have to book again when they’re in Ipswich Next week!
Zog Live is on tour around the UK for six months and we think it’s delightful and well worth a seat! We saw it at the Lowestoft Marina Theatre and have to give a quick nod to them for being lovely to the children and looking after my friend while I navigated my way around the one way system, found a car park and ran at break neck speed to make it with 30 seconds before curtain up. The theatre is very quaint and the staff gorgeously helpful! Listings for the rest of the tour can be found here – and ticket prices start at just £12.50.
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