IMAGINE LIVE

Alison Lester’s book has been in print since 1989, testament to its enduring fascination. Filled with lively and charming drawings of children, animals, and the places where they live – including dinosaurs and their habitats (a sure winner with kids given their fascination with these creatures), Lester’s book has the laudable aim of stimulating children’s (and adults’ – why not?) imagination. To imagine themselves as the animals, to transport themselves to where the animals are – and transform familiar household objects into horses, elephants, birds… In other words, to connect to the world around them and find the magic in it via imagination.

Now Jolyon James has brought Lester’s book to life with songs, dances, animations, projections, giant props, and narration. A huge screen above the stage shows pictures and text straight from the book. Sprightly and engaging Ashlea Pike and Aubrey Flood play and make animals with props – a clotheshorse, a broom, scissors – and sing and dance, engaging the audience directly – and getting exuberant responses. Narrator and puppeteer Phillip McInnes turns a huge copy of the book into a big slowly hovering bird (complete with the sound of the flap of its wings – magical sound design by Justin Gardam). Composer and performer Nate Gilkes adds sweet and lively music on violin. A conversation between an adventurous grandmother and her granddaughter, as they read the book together and remember places and animals they’ve been, is shown on two big SmartPhone screens.  Everything moves along at a brisk and energetic pace.

The show is intended for kids 4 to 12 so audience responses varied. Some littlies were restless – too many words, not enough action? The kids are fully engaged when asked to do something. When Ashlea Pike makes a creature out of kitchen utensils, the five-or-six-year-old beside me was jumping out of his seat to identify it.  Likewise, the cardboard box head dinosaur later that loomed into the audience…

IMAGINE LIVE is not quite a stand-alone show or an adaptation per se; it doesn’t really attempt to be either. Despite the inventive additions and enhancements that Jolyon makes to his source material, the show rests on the book, constantly endorsed during the show. If sometimes the show might appear to adults as a 55-minute promo for the book itself (on sale in the foyer), that’s okay because the aim is, in fact, to send children back to the book for an even greater exercise of their imaginations.

Michael Brindley

Images: Peter Foster Photography