One of my favourite family Christmas traditions for the last three years has been our annual trip to Sherman Theatre to see their theatre show for under sevens. This year’s show is a musical adaptation of The Princess and the Pea by Welsh playwright Katherine Chandler (who also adapted last year’s...
Pantomime is such a curious British tradition. Men dressed as women; booing and hissing; shouts of ‘oh, no it isn’t’ and ‘oh, yes it is’; innuendo-laden jokes that go well over the children’s heads but leave the adults crying with laughter. I was trying to explain the concept of panto...
I was so relieved to see the sun shining this morning. After yesterday’s non-stop torrential rain, I was worried for the young cast of Disney’s Beauty And The Beast Junior. Everyman’s annual open air theatre festival is a big event in the Cardiff theatrical calendar, amateur or otherwise. Yet while...
As the youngest of three children, Baby Boy I has been to a lot of theatre in his first year of life. I think he was about six weeks old when he accompanied his big brother and sister to his first show and he’s been to a dozen or so since....
*Thanks to Theatr Iolo for inviting us to see the show in exchange for this review. You know that old saying about how young children much prefer playing with the boxes their Christmas and birthday presents come in, rather than the toys themselves? The reason people say it so much...
As a family, we love going to the theatre. We’ve taken all our children since they were very young. Watching their little faces light up as the action unfolds in front of them is magical. Theatre reviewing, and press and publicity for several big arts companies, has been a big...
Sherman Cymru has gained a reputation for creating exceptional theatre for young children. Their annual Christmas-time show is a festive highlight for many families in Cardiff, mine included. Five-year-old Little E and three-year-old Little O still talk about last year’s show, Corina Pavlova and the Lion’s Roar, even now so...
My children love pirates and they also love dinosaurs, so you can imagine how much they love a book combining the two. Especially when the books are as fast-paced, adventurous and brightly illustrated as the Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs series, written by acclaimed children’s author Giles Andrea and...
A review of Match, at Sherman Cymru, Cardiff Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl is a heart-breaking tale of a poor young girl who sells matches to make money. After an unsuccessful day of working in the cold, she is too scared to go home to her abusive father....
Ah, Julia Donaldson! The queen of the bedtime story! I don’t know a single baby, toddler or pre-schooler whose bookshelf doesn’t contain at least one of her stories. We have about 20 of her books and they are all firm favourites, not to mention the 10 or so titles...