There’s a Monster in Your Show at Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch

[Ad- gifted experience] We often go to the Queen’s theatre Hornchurch to see a number of plays throughout the year. They’ve got one auditorium, where their stage is front and centre. It’s a fantastic venue, always full of life. Before going in, they’ve got a little children’s book and play area, a cafe and a bar on the other side. Often, Dann and I go to shows for older audiences in the evening, but during the Easter break, we went to see There’s a Monster in Your Show with Robin and Amelia. Robin use to have the Monster in Your Books, back when we did bedtime reading, and was excited to see a show all around these characters.

There’s a Monster in Your Show was a performance aimed at younger children, and as such, had a lot of movement and interaction right from the start. The cast were all throughout the seats, playing with the audience up until a bell rang and they made their way quickly on stage, talking about how they needed to prepare for the show later that day. The main character was actually the author of the books, taking centre stage and starting out with a song about how excited he was to be running his own play.

That is, until a monster escapes their book and ends up on stage! The monster, which is a quite fun puppet, starts causing chaos (despite the audience warning everyone), which brought out more singing, more dancing, and even a bit of worry from the main character himself. The worry goblins of his appear behind him, on these window-like screens that often show some of the things that are more magical.

Over the course of the rest of There’s a Monster at Your Show, we meet three of the other characters from the books; Dragon, Unicorn and Alien. All of which are brought by Monster to help with problems that he’s sort of caused. Some of them have helped, where as others have added to the chaos! Robin was very much into the shouting back, dancing in her seat, and having a lot of fun during the show. Amelia and I both liked the puppets, which were very well made, with moving faces and eyes. There’s a Monster in Your Show is just a good spirits performance, with a lot of fun creatures. During the show we were encouraged to take pictures, which was fun, as well.

There’s a Monster at Your Show is going to continue to tour around the United Kingdom, so do keep an eye out at your local theatre.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!