Review: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt for a lively family theatre experience

Yesterday I went to Kingston twice. Once to watch a bear hunt and once to go on a bear hunt.

Big Girl insisted on taking her teddy to see the stage adaptation of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, which we’d been invited to review, and when we later tried looking for it, we couldn’t find Teddy anywhere and couldn’t remember seeing him after he’d waved to the bear on stage at Rose Theatre.

After concluding that it was nowhere in the house, nor on the street outside our house, nor in the car, I decided to make a second trip to Kingston at 9.30 in the evening to search the streets we’d walked and the parking garage.

The good news was that my Bear Hunt was quickly brought to an end when Daddy T found Teddy behind the sofa and I could turn around in a roundabout in Kingston. It had been a pretty boring trip–much unlike the one earlier in the day, which was a highlight for the entire family.

Baby Boy, who soon turns 2, and four-year-old Big Girl both love the award-winning Michael Rosen picture book, and the show, which stays true to the main events in the book, was easy to follow for a young audience.

The show tells the story of the intrepid family and their musical dog who go on a quest to find a bear. They wade through gigantic swishy swashy grass, a splishy splashy river and thick oozy, squelchy mud.

After reading the book, which first came out in 1989, I was struggling to see how the show could  be one-hour long, but by the time the actors were squelching and squerching I was more worried we wouldn’t get to our next appointment on time. Each section in the book is interpreted in a different way in director Sally Cookson’s fun-filled adaptation, with the actors using buckets of water, for example, to create a river and brown paint and hand painting to do a muddy scene. 

In addition to the varied use of props on the otherwise almost empty stage, there are also songs and plenty of audience participation. My favourite moment was when the father figure appointed one parent from the front row to sing and do the actions with him while everyone else in the audience helped the other actors sing different lines – hysterically funny for parents in the room. 

Front-rowers should also watch out for the water scene. The actors don’t only “splishy splashy” in buckets but also use water pistols to let everyone join in the river fun. We were up in the circle, but even there we got squirted on, and the surprise made us all laugh. 

Close to the end of the show, I could hear some children getting scared as the family was approaching the bear, but I loved that the bear in the play was nowhere near as scary as I thought it could be. It was a huge teddy–a charming furry friend who I’m not surprised the audience seemed to love as soon as he came on stage.

In fact, we were clapping away frantically by the end and Big Girl beamed: “This was very good!” 

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is on tour at the moment and will be playing at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea  from 3 August to 3 September

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