This is our year to embrace Seattle Children’s Theater. I took Sara to Robin Hood before Xmas and planned to take her after the holidays. Laura’s teacher beat me to the pop and planned a school trip. I dropped Sara off at school. Darcy and I drove the girls to the Seattle Center. The sky was blue. I love the view of the three radio stations atop Queen Anne Hill.
We added another kid, Henry. I walked around with Darcy and his aunt, a PT. The kids ran after seagulls and ice skated on the frost.
In a moment, we went from 3 kids to 3 adults to 21 kids. One teacher had to park her car and the other a bus in the impossible to find parking of the Seattle Center.
Our kids donned yellow vests and became part of their class. I was the “lead teacher”. SCT was awesome at seating us. We got seated in the front row.
As usual, the play itself was awesome. Laura was entranced the whole time. That did not happen previously with the previous play, if you give a Mouse a Cookie when she was 3yo. I hadn’t repeated the experience since. It’s amazing what 2 yrs can do. The play was a musical with cutesy songs and fun actors.
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Seattle Children’s Theatre
by Rebekah Denn
The Wizard of Oz. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Add to that list A Year with Frog and Toad, another one of those rare children’s books that gains a whole new level of magic when it’s translated to another medium.
The musical, now on stage at the Seattle Children’s Theatre, is a loosely connected but relatively faithful adaptation of several stories from Arnold Lobel’s classic books. The tales are arranged to follow the seasons, and the stage settings (revamped and updated from the theater’s 2004/2005 run) emphasize the passing of time from spring-green leaves to snow falling on evergreen trees. Adding to the enduring quality are the delightful music and catchy lyrics, a faintly ‘50s sweetness and sturdiness, and an emphasis on friendship and trust and the other things that really matter in life. As if that weren’t enough, you also get some pretty funny jokes and physical humor.
Among my three kids, my 4-year-old is probably the most appropriate age for the show, and he did watch intently through the stories he knows – raking leaves, growing plants, sledding down a hill. The one scene that can be scary – an encounter with the “Large and Terrible Frog” – is played here mostly for laughs. But even my 9-year-old watched raptly, laughed in delight, and left dancing. The show is advertised as for all ages, but we left the toddler home, knowing she wouldn’t make it to the ending time of nearly 9 p.m. (We might have braved a matinee with her, although the running time is one hour and forty-five minutes.)
The show only calls for five actors, some playing several parts, so there’s no room for a weak link. SCT’s crew played their many parts with more self-awareness and broader yucks than I’ve seen in some productions, but the kids appreciated every wink and nod. The deeper messages still shine through, and it almost brings tears along with the laughs to see the qualities that everyone needs spoken through the gentle frog and the thorny toad – the loyalty and love and a big dose of hope.
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The play captured Laura’s imagination at the dinner hour. We laughed together as we related funny parts of the film. Laura asked me lots of questions after the actors explained all their techniques. She liked the cookie scene. I thought the cookie scene was cute but came perilously close to lunch.
We headed into Rice n’ Spice, a Thai restaurant close to the parking deck. The girls looked around and said…this is chinese, this is japanese. We talked about Thailand, Asia, Hinduism, Buddha, gods, statues. I had the best Husmann beef stew. It provided us another dinner.
The afternoon was wrapped in a sadness. I moved on to school and swim. I finished the evening with Book Club talking about The Blue Sweater and discussions about aid in Africa. It was lovely to be around such fun women.