January | 2011 | Life in the Wee Hours

We went to watch ‘The Magic Treetop’ at the Esplanade today. It was much better than the previous PLAYtime! performance ‘The Kingdom under the Bed’ which we watched last October. The play was about a squirrel who took a robin’s egg thinking that it was a big nut and how the robin tried to get her egg back. The performance area was Y-shaped which meant that more kids could get up close to the action. There was a lot more interaction with the audience than that previous play we watched. There were ‘fireflies’ that ‘flew’ over the audience and ‘clouds’ that ‘floated’ by. The kids in the audience were also involved in gathering acorns for the squirrel and pasting coloured dots on a chameleon. There were spelling bees which flew around spelling words and the moral of the story was about being kind to others and doing the right thing. I thought it was very interesting and I think Anya enjoyed most of it though she was a bit clingy cos she didn’t nap and was very tired. I hope ‘The Magic Ocean’ that we’re watching next month will be as good (even though it’s in Mandarin which Anya doesn’t really understand)!

Ok, I still need to complain a bit about some of the parents and kids there. The two girls beside Anya kept shushing her BEFORE the play started which was a bit ridiculous. One of the girls also ‘stole’ a coloured dot from another girl and I had to ask her to return it. Her mother was seated somewhere at the back. Also don’t understand why parents don’t ensure that their kids behave!! I saw a boy tearing off a bit of the cloud floating by and after the play, there were kids pulling bits of the set off and the parents just didn’t care!!