I was away for the weekend, so my husband took the boys to the Festival, and he wrote this guest blog post. Enjoy!
The Edinburgh Fringe experience for me has
always been about chance and serendipity; wandering past a venue and somehow
being convinced to pay the exorbitant entrance fees to witness what could
either be an excruciatingly embarrassing failed attempt to create the future of
stand-up "comedy", or a genuinely life-affirming window into another world.
With two small children, however, chance and
serendipity can all too easily get in the way of ensuring adequate nutritional
and nappy coverage. As such, a safe bet seemed to amble down to the Pleasance
"Kidzone" and spend a lazy Saturday morning frantically trying to
stop my children ransacking the place.
The Kidzone has a play area for young (under 3-year old)
children and the crafts area is small but fun and friendly. It is more
like a cafe with good children's facilities than a dedicated children's area
(without a soft play area, how could it really be considered a "children's
area"?, asks Julien). Having said this, there was a nice-looking tent that
had stuff on all day which we did not sample, so we probably missed lots of
good stuff in there.
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| The Pleasance Kidzone crafts space |
Why did we miss out? Because soon after arriving at
the Kidzone, we were approached by a slightly shifty-looking fellow who offered
to give us free tickets for an event that was starting in around half an
hour, The Magical Playroom with Cerrie Burnell. Now I'm a man of
the world and I know that getting the "first one free" can only mean
trouble. Next thing we knew, we would be bundled into an armoured Peppa Pig bus and
shipped to a remote Charlie and Lola summer camp from where we would never
return.
I have no idea why the tickets were free (they
are normally £9.50 each) but never mind: amazing!
On the promise that we would definitely
go (he was quite particular about this), he handed over 3
tickets and thus we had cashed in our morning's
ration of good luck. Fringe serendipity and nappies can coexist -
hooray!
I had very little clue about what the show
involved, though I had ascertained that it was intended for
kids 3 years and up, and from the flyer I
was familiar with Cerrie Burnell as "the lady off CBeebies with a stumpy
arm". Leo being not much past 2 and the show being 55 minutes, I was
slightly apprehensive that we wouldn't last the course.
Nevertheless we went in and (after convincing
Leo not to run onto the stage and sabotage the props) sat down and got
comfortable. I have to admit to finding the first few minutes a bit awkward: a
presenter off CBeebies was dancing about a stage designed to look like a little
girl's bedroom hugging Barbie dolls and talking like a little girl. I was
painfully aware that Julien's professed idea of fun at the moment is more along
the lines of Spiderman aggressively "rescuing" pirates with the aid
of dangerous-looking sticks, and he has started being aware of the differences
between what little girls and little boys like (or are encouraged to like). I
could see his eyebrow raise slightly at all the girlie talk.
"She did lots
of dancing." - Julien
The show has one actor - Cerrie Burnell -
who plays both the main protagonist - a little girl called Libby - as well as
the little girl's mother, father, grandmother, and doctor. She does this very
well, with all the different characters having clearly different (but
convincing) accents and a simple prop to make it clear who she is at any one
time (for the mother she put on a scarf, for the lovely Irish grandmother a
pair of diva sunglasses). From an adult perspective this worked well, and the
different characters were somehow very clearly defined, but it was possibly a
bit confusing for a 4-year-old and definitely went comfortably over the head of
a 2 year old.
The thing about a physical difference such as
Cerrie Burnell's lack of (most of) her right arm is that,
although you try to ignore it because you are
rationally aware that it is not relevant, it is quite hard
to do so, and you end up trying so hard to stop
thinking about it that it ends up being all you think
about.
Or maybe that's just me.
For this reason, at the beginning I kept
worrying that one of the children in the audience would shout out something
awkward.
Imagine how disconcerted I was, then, when a
loud, amplified child's voice came over the PA saying "what happened to
your arm?" in that classic shameless child-like way, followed by another
child's voice asking the same thing, and another. "Libby" initially
gave the true answer ("I was born like this") and then all sorts of
fun made-up answers ("I was walking through the jungle when I met a lion
who took me to see a mermaid who etc. etc.). At this point, it became clear
that the whole show was about her arm (or semi lack thereof) and I could relax
and stop trying not to think about it. Phew!
"She broke her
arm - that's how she had been born." - Julien
At this point, it got a lot more fun. I have a
game with Julien where he pretends to be a doctor and asks what's wrong with
me, at which point I make up an elaborate and implausible story to explain why
I have a minor ailment and he giggles away. This was along exactly the same
lines, so he completely understood the joke.
It transpired from here that the little girl
Libby was being encouraged by doctors and her parents to get a prosthetic (or
"pathetic" as she called it) arm, and she didn't want one. She felt
that she could do everything she wanted to do (especially be a ballerina)
without needing it. The story is of how she had the courage to convince her
parents of this and stand up to the nasty doctor, the moral being to follow
your dreams and to treat the things that make you different as the things that
make you special.
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| (Source: BBC News website) |
Not the most profound or original sentiments,
but nevertheless true, and particularly heartwarming
considering the real-life Libby (Cerrie
Burnell) clearly overcame prejudice against her own differences to become a
successful TV presenter. It is also admirable to have been able to address an
issue like this in a way that could be clearly understood by small children,
and to keep it fun enough for even smaller children to be kept entertained. She
had some toy props in her bedroom drawers - a snow tiger, a rocking horse, a
russian doll and more - that came alive and told their own stories of success
in the face of adversity.
"She showed us
things." - Julien
I have to admit to being quite soppy when it
comes to heart-string-tugging stories like this and,
especially combined with the lovely original
music, found myself at times welling up. It was thus
essential to do some very manly Spiderman games
immediately afterwards.
Julien and Leo remained rapt pretty much throughout,
despite there not being a huge amount going on visually (there could maybe have
been more).
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| The boys meet Cerrie Burnell after the show |
"Nothing
happened." - Julien
At the end, Julien immediately said "that
was really good!" and gave the show a rating of 5 stars, and he was very
excited (if slightly shy) to be able to meet Cerrie Burnell after the show.
Read more about the show on the BBC News website.
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