A shimmying iguana, a conversational map and an enchanted backpack; the colourful world of preschool favourite Dora The Explorer has brought its globe-dominating edutainment to the West End.
If you’ve not heard of Nickelodeon’s miniature star, you probably don’t spend much time with young children. Those of us who do, even if we’ve not seen the children’s channel favourite, are aware of the multilingual cartoon girl, her sidekick Boots and the powerful position she holds in the kids TV world. She is the Empress of infant entertainment.
Now you can see the show’s colourful characters live on the London stage. In the style of many a theme park show, this means performers engulfed in oversized costumes gesticulating wildly while their voices are projected into the auditorium through speakers.
Though the audience never sees the actors’ faces, they could be easily recognised after the show. They’d be the ones bouncing down the street like a pack of Tiggers, so springy are their heels. When they’re not dancing their way through Dora’s adventure in search of her lost teddy, they’re chatting while hopping from foot to foot, tossing their arms around as though bringing the City Of Lost Toys’ air force in to land.
While this might not be my idea of a great time, I spent half the performance watching my son, who is about a quarter of a century closer to the show’s target demographic.
When Dora caught stars, he waved his complimentary papery celestial body like he’d never waved before. He puffed out his cheeks and blew with gusto to stop Swiper the fox’s boat. He used all his two-year-old strength to push the sun back together and, most tellingly, he never tried to escape, except when he wanted to join Boots the Monkey on stage.
Nickelodeon’s Dora The Explorer: Search For The City Of Lost Toys – to give it its full name – might not be cutting edge, adult-enthralling children’s theatre. It is, as you’d imagine, a tightly controlled live version of a TV favourite which, despite its explorative theme, doesn’t push any boundaries. Does that matter? An auditorium full of happy children, whose energised shouting could probably have been heard on Mars over the noise of Will.i.am’s Reach For The Stars being played by the Curiosity rover, would suggest not.