Erth. Norwood Concert Hall. 27 Feb 2016
The kids will love this. I was interested in dinosaurs since I was a young'un - I learned all their names and went to the museum myself on Saturday morning to look at their skeletons. So I loved it. Parents will love it.
Australian designer and creator Scott Wright knows his audience too well and winds them at the beginning of the show to their delight, starting with dinos in nappies and promising to bring out the big dinos later. While the show has been around for some time, what's on offer in the Festival is the version developed for Broadway. You will see the same show that Alicia Keys, Jerry Seinfeld and Sarah Jessica Parker and their kids enjoyed in The Big Apple. Up until that point, Wright's original show was true dinky-di, sporting only Australian dinosaurs, but now the world favourites are included, like triceratops and T.rex.
Wright advocates responsible behaviour around dinosaurs. Useful information is eased in even as the kids squeal in delight. Some lucky kids (very helpful to sit near the front) get on stage to pet the baby critters after some brief instruction useful to dealing with any pet. Lots of quasi-scary and fun audience participation as well. And anyone who has been to Cape Otway Lighthouse will be delighted to confront a couple of emu-size Laeallynasaura that were discovered nearby in Dinosaur Cove.
The engine room of the show is the technology of the puppets, the largest whole creatures are larger than SUVs, and there were two of them. And golly gosh, don't they look real! Their skin, their growl, head and jaw operations and the way the puppeteers manipulate large body movements. They are curious and intelligent. We don't see wild dinosaurs, we see very large pets.
I would have sworn Wright promised a dinosaur that would be capable of eating the seven bales of hay that were on stage in one go, so while a 'five-year old' juvenile T.rex was produced, I thought there would be a big surprise at the end of the show with a giant. No such luck.
Erth's Dinosaur Zoo is the next best thing to being in the Cretaceous, even better, because your toddler would have been the meal, not the master, of these magnificent and skillfully operated avatars.
P.S. See the article on Erth and their show in The Weekend Australian Review February 27-28, 2016.
David Grybowski
When: 27 Feb to 6 Mar
Where: Norwood Concert Hall
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
