Hull Truck Theatre – 10th February 2024 and 12th February 2024
Reviewed by Dawn Bennett
5*****
A Great Pirate Adventure is part of Hull Trucks half term activities. Aimed at children between the ages of 3 and 6 years old this is a great chance to get young children involved in, and watch, theatre. This is the first review of a show I have done that had a craft session is included in the ticket price! The children involved made a pirate hat, eye patch and hook with help from the adults they brought with them and HEY and Hull Truck volunteers. A lot of the parents/guardians I spoke to said they had attended things at Hull Truck before that had a craft session related to the show they were seeing and had already booked for the shows that were being done during the Easter holidays. A lot also said how it helped children understand how a theatre worked and how to sit and watch a show and what happened during one.
After the 45 minutes craft session the actors (Sophie Clay and Jack Fielding) came out, introduced themselves to audience and took us into Hull Trucks Stage 1 auditorium. The children sat on the stage and the rest of us behind them and Sophie and Jack began the story of A Great Pirate Adventure.
Sophie had lots of jobs and she’d been sacked from all of them, they got the children to tell them what jobs they thought she’d done and why she had been sacked … it turns out the children were right, she wasn’t very good at any of the jobs. She meets Mr. Be-ard (Jack) who asks her to help him find something he’s lost and this really looks like a treasure map and he does look like a pirate! The actors really get the children involved, from walking the plank, wearing their eye patches and hats and when a parrot and a mermaid appeared the children absolutely loved it. After visiting an island Sophie, with the help of the children, find the treasure and then she realises that Mr. Be-ard isn’t her friend and neighbour but Captain Bad Beard the pirate!! It turns out that the captain doesn’t want to be a pirate anymore…he wants to retire and so he asks Sophie to be the pirate captain and she does!
This is a great show for the younger members of the theatre audience, a great introduction to theatre and a craft session thrown in. It is pitched at just the right level, isn’t too long and Sophie and Jack were brilliant in the way they interacted with the audience And I don’t know who enjoyed it more, me, the children or the adults that they brought with them!