A Londoner-friend had texted me a photo of the Les Enfants Terribles production of Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs a few weeks back after she’d seen photos of us going in fancy dress to Roo over at London with a Toddler’s birthday party based on the books. Although it sounded amazing, and is one of Weasel’s favourite books (we only have the original so far), I was reluctant since, well, Weasel isn’t exactly the bravest bunny in the barrel. I thought we might have a crying, clingy nearly-3-year-old that wanted to leave, in addition to the fidgety 9 month old Ninja. But when I saw that Roo had gone, well, we couldn’t miss out!
We arrived about an hour early, so had time for a carousel ride and a trip to the newly built Jubilee Gardens playground (which was aimed a way older kids, all large wooden climbing frames), accompanied by some awesome buskers playing Caribbean drums.
This is pretty much all she could play on, but loved it until a little girl wanted to play on it with her. Sensing the tears of her having to make real social interaction, I thought it was best to head off and get our tickets.
Practicalities:
Tix: £10 each, plus a £1.75 booking fee. We paid for the Ninja because we couldn’t work out on the website (click here for it) if she would be free or not, and we are far too lazy to phone. We only booked our tickets on Friday, and attended the 5pm showing Sunday, so they are probably still available.
Here’s the girls and Husband waiting with anticipation, complete with pirate headscarf
Parking: I am so never taking the train in again (not that I do much) after finding out that you can park at the National Theatre all day on Sundays for only £8! And you get an amazing example of brutalist architecture thrown in on your trip. This is life-changing stuff. £8? It would cost £40-something for us to get in by train. It’s worth sitting in the A3 traffic for. There were plenty of spaces as well. Not realising it would be shut afterwards though, we did end up going down the car ramp to get back to our car for lack of any other obvious option.
Get in quick! It’s only on until the 8th of September, so you have to act quickly of you want to catch the show. I’ll be keeping an eye out in the future for other productions of theirs though since this was so good.
Scary Tyrannosaurus Rex
Weasel’s Verdict: Weasel just kept saying “that was a really, really good show, it was really great”. She says she now wants to see more shows (it was her first proper play). Her favourite was the T-rex she says, despite the fact that he’s definitely the scariest thing in it and she was decidedly tense sat on my lap when he arrived on stage (which I’m quite happy was late on in the show). The Ninja squirmed a lot, but so did most of the kids in there. Thankfully clever mummy had a bag of kiddie biscuits and a nice wallet to chew on. She loved the dinosaurs too, and when they came on about halfway through, she started paying a lot more attention, mesmerised by the costumes. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more of their productions and more kid’s plays in general since this was so successful.
adventures with gravel 