The Stage

Television translations - Children’s TV adapted to stage

Published Monday 15 March 2004 at 10:45 by Susan Elkin

With the success of Hi-5 Alive! and the Bear in the Big Blue House shows, children’s TV is packing theatres when adapted to a stage show. Susan Elkin outlines why this is good for the theatrical industry

How do you fill a 3,700-seat venue three times a day? You put on a TV-linked family show aimed at under-fives. It is a simple formula and, like everything else to do with ‘early years’, it is a massive growth industry.

The showbiz equivalent of inventing fish fingers or baked beans, a show like Hi-5 Alive!, which I saw recently at the Carling Apollo, Hammersmith is packing in little punters at a phenomenal rate. And everyone on a seat (over 12 months old) has to have a ticket costing £8-£15 so the producers are clearly on to a winner.

Based on the TV programme broadcast in Britain as part of Milkshake, Channel 5’s breakfast offering for tinies, Hi-5 Alive! has toured Australia, where it originated, and Singapore. Now it is playing in 15 large-scale venues in the UK and Eire. After Hammersmith it was off to other big spaces such as the Liverpool Empire and City Hall, Newcastle.

It works because the children recognise the five all-singing, all-dancing young Aussies from watching them at home. At the beginning of the show the characters point to each other and the children in the audience shout back their names. The kids are clearly in very familiar territory. A child behind me was knowledgeably singing along with the songs even before she was told to. And the sales people are not missing any tricks either. Merchandise - videos, CDs, T-shirts, balloons and so on - sells like hot cakes at these shows. Even the £3.50 programme, the main part of which was stickers and games for children, was selling well.

And this is not an isolated development. Bear in the Big Blue House Live! - A First Time For Everything also had a recent run at the Apollo, Hammersmith and is now touring. It too, features on Milkshake and is playing to sell-out houses. Even the youngest children recognise Jim Henson’s puppets and so feel comfortable.

The format is well thought out for the special needs of this age group too. Both Hi-5 Alive! and the Bear show run two 30-minute halves with a longish interval so that everyone has time to get to the loo. And the content in both shows relies more on song than on speech.

Other TV characters now regularly appear onstage - including Andy Pandy who now has a voice after 54 years of miming. According to Craig Stanley, general manager of live entertainment events at BBC Worldwide, its TV-based shows have appeared at 57 theatres in 11 months - “probably the most extensive tour ever”. Bob the Builder and the Tweenies have had plenty of live exposure too. And no doubt the pound signs are already glinting in the eyes of some entrepreneur with his or her eye on BBC2’s Balamory.

“Yes, we’re looking at a number of shows now for stage treatment,” says Stanley, pointing out that most of their output focuses on characters’ social skills, problem solving and working together - so is well placed to build strong links between entertainment and education. “BBC Worldwide recognises the excellent work that independent producers and theatres do, so we’re open to suggestions from any producer and have invited bids in The Stage.”

Of course none of this is new. Even in the fifties, shortly after the birth of mass TV, there was a lot of merchandise relating to Muffin the Mule, for example. Even then it was recognised that there was money to be made from exploiting this age group. By the time the Tweenies and the Teletubbies arrived in the nineties, TV links had the potential to generate big business which is what Ragdoll, the company behind the Tweenies has become.

It is not new to transfer TV to the stage either. Harry Corbett was doing live Sooty shows in theatres in the eighties. Neither, of course, is it new to present shows for under-fives. Quicksilver, Polka, Theatre, Unicorn and Oily Cart - to name but a few - have been putting on wonderful shows for this age group for decades. But they have necessarily been more low key and have played to much smaller houses, which has meant a more selective audience. What is novel is the sheer scale of what is happening now. These TV shows enjoy an enormous following among small children and their families. So, unsurprisingly, the heavily marketed, spin-off stage shows attract audience numbers to die for.

Production companies often complain that children and families will not come to anything but pantomime because it is too expensive or it is daunting. Clearly, provided your designer gets the onstage scaling-up right and offers the youthful customer a readily recognisable product, he is not daunted at all - and his parents will stump up the money.

Stanley cites three advantages of onstage TV: “First, it’s a very positive thing for a family to come as a group. Second, it’s creating employment for actors and musicians. Third, everyone in the industry is happy if theatres are full.”

Moreover these infants - some of them babes in arms - are discovering the joys of live theatre at a very impressionable age. So tomorrow’s audiences are being nicely nurtured. If the trend lasts it is good news for the entertainment industry whichever way you look at it.

• Susan Elkin edits Early Years Update, published ten times a year by Optimus Publishing. See www.optimuspub.co.uk