All aboard the Royal Centre for a fun-filled CBeebies musical ocean adventure! Take a deep breath and dive underwater in the concert hall submarine with its musical crew, the BBC Concert Orchestra.
This show, which lasts just over an hour, mainly consists of ocean wildlife footage with live classical music and the occasional cut to a CBeebies character on the big screen. It’s a nice concept and presumably quite similar to the live experiences of BBC’s Planet Earth which have been touring arena’s for the last few years.
We also have CBeebies presenters Rory (Crawford) and Jen from Andy's Adventures (Puja Panchkoty) fronting the whole thing live on stage. They work through impressions of a series of ocean creatures, including; dolphins, penguins, seahorses, starfish and turtles. Each time they tell you a little bit about these creatures and encourage you to add them to your ‘musical scrapbook’.
On the big screen Andy (of Andy's Adventures) is ready to report from his submarine pod and JoJo and Gran Gran are on board with a ‘Gran Gran Plan’ for everyone. There are also very brief appearances from The Octonauts, Love Monster, Hey Duggee and about 20seconds of dancing to the Bluey theme tune.
It's an experience I thoroughly enjoyed as a grown adult. But did it pass the toddler test? I’ve got to be honest and say it didn’t. About 20 minutes in, after the initial novelty of looking around at people and being in a big crowd wore off, the cries of “I’m bored daddy” from my 2-year-old started. This is a toddler who has previously happily sat through two similar-length children’s theatre shows. Looking around the room, most other children were either being plied with Haribo or fidgeting before the end too.
The aims of this show are laudable, but I’m not convinced the balance of content is right. I’d love someone to find a way to make a classical orchestra and deep ocean footage appealing to toddlers, but intrinsically I don't think either is.
The other bits featuring previously unseen CBeebies character footage unanimously hit the spot (and the aforementioned cameo from Bluey got the biggest cheer of the show), but these cheers were probably a bit few and far between by comparison. Many CBeebies shows are built on physical comedy and pantomime humour and there's none of that present here. All in all the idea behind the show is commendable, but I feel it needs a few tweaks to make it something the whole family (rather than just the parents) can enjoy.
CBeebies Ocean Adventure with the BBC Concert Orchestra took place at the Royal Concert Hall on Saturday 26 May 2024.
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