Musical Makes Kids Part Of The Enormous Adventure

MINNEAPOLIS (WJON News) -- Kids can yell and shout and be a part of the show at an exciting musical making its U.S. Premiere in Minnesota. The Enormous Crocodile The Musical is based on the children's book by Roald Dahl and is currently running at the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis. The show features a variety of large puppets, toe-tapping tunes, and audience interaction.

Director Emily Lim says the show lets kids in the audience be kids and is a joy explosion for everyone:

"Kids get told what to do the whole time and spaces where children get to be really noisy and jump up and down and throw things, that's a spoiler alert, those are not often theatre spaces but why shouldn't they be and if we can hold that in a way that is safe and really, really fun then that feels super exciting to me."

She says there is a lot of power in letting the kids feel like they are a part of the story and that interaction is part of what makes the show so great.

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How does the musical differ from the book?

Lim also helped develop the musical from the book. She says the book has few words, so the musical is a mix of catch phrases from the book and new scenes that writer Suhayla El-Bushra imagined that sprung off those storylines:

"We created the character, the teacher, the teacher didn't exist in the original book, but it felt really important that we had someone in that role who the croc could be positioned against, two different kinds of powerful figures in the piece."

Lim says it is a process of judging which characters feel most tasty and how do they tell the story that is constantly surprising audiences. She says young children are an amazing, captivated audience as long as you surprise and delight them, and bring them into the story, which she says the Enormous Crocodile does in so many fun ways. The Enormous Crocodile The Musical is playing at the Children's Theatre Company through November 23rd.

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