The Hungry Caterpillar Show Live

So today was our first day out in what feels like ages. Apart from the fun days christmas shopping we haven't managed many fun days out over december so it was really nice to be able to treat Lily to something a little more interesting. 

Today we headed to the Ambassadors Theatre near covent garden to the The Hungry Caterpillar live show along with other stories by Eric Carle. We were booked in for the 2pm show and Lily was super excited to be going to find the caterpillar, which is what I told her we were going to do as she doesn't really understand what as show is yet. 

The Ambassador Theatre is amazing, and totally old looking which I loved! I really love the feel of the old style Theatres. When we took our seats Lily sat on my knee and she was happily interacting with a little girl sat in front of us. I was actually feeling slightly anxious as last time I took Lily to see a show which was the In the Night Garden show. She cried so much because it went dark. Also lately she has not wanted her room dark and didn't want to step foot into the local winter wonderland because of the dark.

The show started and as the stage was nice and bright, Lily sat quietly and intently watched the show. The first story that was played out was The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse. I had actually never read this story, in fact the only story I had read by Eric is the Hungry Caterpillar. This was a great way to be introduced to the story and I loved it and must now buy Lily the book.

The actors all acted out the story and danced around the stage with colourful cloths and also huge colourful puppets while a artist was painting the different animals in the story. Lily loved seeing the colourful animals and was telling me the different colours and also telling me the animals she knew. I think that this first story was Lily's favourite part of the entire show and she would of happily watch those puppets on the stage for quite a while. 

Between stories the Theatre and stage went dark and Lily would cry between each one, but I reassured her that the lights were about to come back on. Even bubbles being blasted into the crowds didn't cheer her up. 

For the second story which was Mister Sea Horse, the lights didn't shine to bright and so Lily was quite nervy during this story and didn't enjoy it as much as the other. The sea horse puppets were amazing, all glittery and colourful and the set was designed so well to look like under the sea. 

The third story unfortunately got even darker which Lily didn't like, this story was The Very Lonely Firefly. A little firefly lit the stage trying to find the other fireflies but instead only found people with lights. The costumes were funny with the actors wearing BIG puppet heads and I thought the end was really pretty when the firefly found its friends and they were all flying around the stage. 

So the last story was about the star of the show which was of corse The Hungry Caterpillar itself! 

The stage lit up brightly after he hatched out of his egg and so Lily was again content. Lily really loved seeing the different fruit being brought out and shouted out apple when she saw the apple. The actors ran around the stage with colourful pieces of food made out of card while the hungry caterpillar ate them. It looked great up on stage. I must say to that they really stuck to the book and the stage props were also identical to the illustrations in the book. Which was great to see. 

All the actors were brilliant and really made the show what it was. Full of enthusiasm and smiles and the story was read nice and loud and clearly for the children to hear.

It was such a great day and i'm really glad I took Lily to see it. Now to go find that Artist book on amazon!