Vancouver Symphony Orchestra: Sailing the Musical Seas

Dates and Venue 2 - 3 March 2012 @ 8pm | Vancouver Playhouse & Terry Fox Theatre

Reviewer Ed Farolan

It's tough entertaining tiny tots who were running all over the place at the Terry Fox Theatre in Port Coquitlam while Lucy Horton and Lisa Grace Allison tried to get their attention and entertain the tots. They tried to get them to jump and clap, swing and sing, and it was the parents and grandparents who had the most difficult time to get them to do that.

Horton and Allison who are from Seattle have been performing for tots for the past few years. I remember taking my granddaughter when she was still three at the Vancouver playhouse a couple of years ago. The educational aspect is good, but at this age, tots wouldn't remember what a basoon or a flute is. I think for children this age, there should be a more intimate contact. Instead of the entertainers being up there on stage, they should mix with the audience and show them the instruments, or come closer to them when they sing their songs.

For example, when they do the baby seal puppet show, perhaps they should go down and let the children touch the puppet and make them dance and sing with it. Naturally, this would be a bit difficult, unless the venue were more like the studio theatre downtown where chairs could be arranged in a semi-circle thus allowing a more intimate rapport with the tots.

This was a 45-minute performance, and I think that's just the time for the tots' attention span. My granddaughter wasn't paying any attention during some sequences, and like the other tots, skipping up and down the aisles. So perhaps Horton and Allison should think of ways of getting more intimate with this very young audience. After all, it's live theatre and not the Muppet Show on TV.

© 2012 Ed Farolan