Gruffalo round-up
The Gruffalo has stolen the show this Christmas, attracting monster crowds to its new West End home, London’s Duchess Theatre. With the theatre inundated with ticket requests, The Gruffalo has now been extended to meet with the demand, and will now play for an extra week – until Sunday, January 11. Adapted from Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s award-winning bestseller, the story follows the adventures of a clever mouse in a forest full of predators, as he sets out on a hunt for nuts. Armed with just a map and a very vivid imagination, he encounters a wheeler-dealer fox, an eccentric old owl, and a maraca-shaking, party-mad snake. But the clever little mouse manages to scare them all off with tall tales of his imaginary monster friend – the Gruffalo!
Imaginatively staged, The Gruffalo is packed with humour, songs and fun.
Tickets price £12-£15 from the box office on 0844 412 4659. Website: www.nimaxtheatres.com/gruffalo.
Source: Barking and Dagenham Post
Seven years after first being performed at Chester Gateway Theatre, Tall Stories’ gently appealing adaptation of the bestselling children’s book is still going strong. So much so, in fact, that this festive West End run has been extended, giving more audiences aged 3-plus and their parents the opportunity to chime in with the rhyming refrains that are so familiar from the story by Julia Donaldson. Here, too, are all the characters who inhabit the brightly coloured woodland world of Axel Scheffler’s illustrations, economically yet vividly brought to life, in Olivia Jacobs’s production, by a bubbly cast of three.
Forget all that fancy gift-wrapping, for young children this unpretentious little West End show might just make the perfect holiday treat.
Box office: 0844 4124659, to Jan 11
Source: Times Online
“I always try out my books on my boys. When I was writing The Gruffalo I got completely stuck at the point where the mouse has met the Gruffalo. I knew the storyline but couldn’t get it into verse. I thought, I’ve had enough of this stupid story, but Alastair said, “Finish it, Mum, I like it.” So I am very grateful to the boys.”
Julia Donaldson speaking in The Guardian
Born in 1948, Julia Donaldson was born and raised in North London with her younger sister, parents and extended family all sharing the family home. Her first interests were firmly rooted in music, her father being a Cello player and her mother a keen singer; herself and her sister were also members of the Children’s Opera Group. Attending Bristol University to study French and Drama, Donaldson met Malcolm, her future husband and together they busked their way around Europe, making up songs in the language of the country they were visiting, before marrying and settling in Glasgow.
The Gruffalo book review
The Gruffalo’s Child book review
Stick Man book review
Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book book review
Posted: January 11th, 2009
Author: Lee
Categories: Julia Donaldson
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Some doors are better left closed . . . In Barrington House, an upmarket block in London, there is an empty apartment. No one goes in, no one comes out. And it’s been that way for fifty years. Until the night watchman hears a disturbance after midnight and investigates. What he experiences is enough to change his life forever.
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