The Stage

The Go! Go! Go! Show

Published Wednesday 28 July 2010 at 16:16 by Ronnie Haydon

This debut production for Mike Stock’s Show 4 Kids enterprise is a veritable sugar rush for the holidays - a gleeful concoction of bubblegum pop and Hi-NRG bass that proves irresistible to stage-struck tweenies and tots. In fact, any child as yet untainted by cynicism and in the market for catchy tunes delivered by frisky young popstrels should be happy to join the Go! Go! Getters club.

Five performers, three girls and two boys, sporting face mics and colour coordinated Top Shop casuals prove immensely clubbable. They encourage bottoms-off-seat participation from the kids and work with an inexhaustible supply of dazzling smiles, dance moves, zany jokes and magic tricks. It helps that the rhythms they lyp-synch to are created by Stock, whose success in the pop charts with colleagues Aitken and Waterman are the stuff of legend. The song and dance is polished and carries a slightly patchy plot involving missing socks and the furry purple Fluffalope puppet that’s snaffling them. Parents may find the lazy stereotyping of the five characters tiresome - blonde Gemma is ditsy and pink, Steve likes sport and is a bit of a buffoon and Holly is pert and bossy - but the young performers radiate warmth, vitality and good cheer. Holly Atterton has an engaging, big-sisterly demeanour that sits well with her stage school polish and Ian Hardman puts in a suitably bumbling performance as Mr Baffled.

With its rollicking songs, inane storyline and a set spotlit in Smartie colours, Go!Go!Go! is all froth and frolic - you’d have to go some to find a perkier show for children this summer.