Theatre Royal Plymouth – The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Emperor’s New Clothes

As part of the Blogger Programme for the Theatre Royal we were invited to go and watch The Emperor’s New Clothes by Stuff and Nonsense.

The Emperors New Clothes This is a story that I was told when I was little and I was going to get a copy of the book to read to Isabelle before we went, but I thought I would leave it as a surprise.

We did watch the clip on the Website which Isabelle really enjoyed.

The show was in the Drum which is a more intimate setting which is great for kids.

The Emperors New Clothes

The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Emperor’s New Clothes is about an Emperor who has a fantastical wardrobe of clothes but doesn’t have a single thing to wear for his upcoming birthday. Thank goodness that two Fashion Designers learn of this and offer their services to make the Emperor a new outfit to wear to his birthday parade.

Little does the Emperor know that the Fashion Designers are two crooks (Claude and Hugo) hoping for a bag of gold by tricking the Emperor into wearing ‘no clothes’ and parade through the town on his horse.

The Emperor’s New Clothes is performed by Toby and Jenny as well as a whole host of really cool puppets.

The performance had very little in the way of props with the main prop being a wardrobe which they slept in, was the Emperor’s Palace and Claude performed some acrobatic’s in as well.

The show interchanged between people and puppets in a very fun way and it was easy to forget that there were only two performers on stage with lots of fun opening doors and drawers.

All the children (and adults) joined in with the performance with clapping and shouting.

And then there was the part of the parade where the Emperor paraded through his Kingdom wearing NO CLOTHES! Isabelle thought this was so funny and had her hand over her mouth laughing as the Emperor’s bottom stuck out of a window!

The show lasts an hour which is great for little one’s who get restless. As well as watching the show I love watching Isabelle’s reactions as she watches performance and she smiled, laughed, clapped and interacted the whole way through.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Our Thoughts

We both really enjoyed the show, and we were super excited to meet the cast including some of the fab puppets.

We met both Jenny and Toby who told us a bit about the background behind Stuff and Nothing and how long it takes to put together a production like this. Jenny and Toby have both had lots of training including going to ‘Clown School’ and Jenny is skilled in acrobatics.

Stuff and Nonsense is based in Bridport, Dorset and you can keep up to date with their performances by checking out their Facebook Page.

I loved the fact that they test all of their ideas on children to gage their reactions to see if it works. What better way to have the critical eye of a child who would boldly point out if they thought something was pants or not.

We got to hold some of the puppets which was quite awesome. I had a hold of Molly but I couldn’t work out how to keep her head up and Isabelle had a got with Molly’s pet pig which she loved as it was her favourite character. She mastered the mouth quite well.

The Emperor’s New Clothes is running at the Theatre Royal Plymouth until the 14th January so there’s still plenty of time to go and watch. It is recommended for 2 years + but they have some information available for you to read so you can work out if you think it would be suitable which you can read here. I would have taken Isabelle to see this at two though.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Isabelle had already eyeballed the Fairy Wands that were on sale for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and quickly rushed over to buy one before we left the theatre.

We then had a wander around the Christmas Market before getting the train home which finished off the day perfectly.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Lisa

*This post was originally posted in December 2016