My Son Pinocchio

I know to expect the unexpected when I visit this Society and, once more, they came up trumps with this Scottish Premiere version of the famous story about the lonely Toymaker and a wooden puppet. It all began with Mel Braid, bringing her own magic style to the role of the Blue Fairy with consummate ease spreading her charm and gentleness around, and granting perfect wishes. In this tale, she had an entourage of Fairies in Training (Ellie Anderson, Charlotte Greig, Siobhan Meldrum, Eilidh Robertson) to help her in her task. The opening scene was set in Geppetto’s Toy Shop where the full company gave voice in a resonant musical number Toys. Marcus Wylie was absolutely perfect in his role of Geppetto, Pinocchio’s “dad”, and did not put a foot wrong throughout his controlled performance, considering he was on stage throughout the entire performance. Of course the main character in this show is Pinocchio, the young wooden puppet who comes “alive”. Step forward young 10-year-old Noah Kurz, who proved to be a star in the making – considering this was his first time on stage and, playing a major role, he was confident and self assured throughout in his dialogue, his singing I’ve Got No Strings, and dancing, was all absolutely perfect – take a bow, young man! David Walker was the nasty-looking, evil Stromboli, the faded theatre puppet master who revelled in his big song number Bravo! Searching for his son, Geppetto finds himself in the village of Idyllia – a village made up of perfect children, created by Professor Buonragazzo, well played by Craig Nicoll. Then we meet children turned into donkeys, then on to Pleasure Island, where father and son are reunited. More adventures follow – and this is where the special projection effects, created by Stuart White, came in! The sequence where Pinocchio and Geppetto fall into the ocean and almost drown and are swallowed by a whale, was stunning and absolutely fantastic to watch. Finally everything turned out happily for all, just proving that when you wish upon a star your dreams come true!

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