The world premiere of renowned theatre company Oily Cart’s latest children’s show, There Was An Old Woman, will play as part of the Southbank Centre’s packed autumn/winter family season.
The immersive show for three to five-year-olds will be joined in the season by the return of Bryony Kimmings’ acclaimed That Catherine Bennett Show, a stage adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’ The Way Back Home and Cirque Alfonse’s daredevil show Timber!.
Kicking proceedings off from 25 to 28 October, Kimmings will once again team up with her nine-year-old niece Taylor Houchen to bring their brilliantly inventive story of what happened when they decided to invent a new type of pop star to audiences aged six to nine-years-old.
Sick and tired of the overly sexy, carbon copy pop stars being touted as role models, Kimmings and her niece invented a new music hero – the dinosaur-loving, bike-riding, tuna pasta-eating Catherine Bennett. Embodied by Aunty Bry and managed by Taylor, the show tells the story of their journey to make her world famous, from the Houses of Parliament to BBC Radio 1, set to Catherine Bennett’s songs about friendship, the future and making a difference.
Following the show from 29 October to 2 November, two international theatre companies join forces to bring the popular picture book The Way Back Home to the stage for children aged four to eight-years-old.
Denmark’s Teater Refleksion and Ireland’s Branar Téatar do Pháistí’s show without words combines puppetry, music and evocative design to tell Jeffers’ imaginative story of a boy who discovers a single-propeller airplane in his wardrobe and flies off into outer space. Millions of miles from earth, the plane begins to sputter and quake, so the boy must make a daring landing on the moon where he discovers he’s not as alone as he first thought. Fans of the book can also head to the Young Vic this Christmas for its children-friendly operatic version of the tale created with the ENO.
As the season draws towards Christmas, the Southbank Centre’s regular Winter Festival will transform the institution into a magical wintery world both inside and out. As the previously announced Slava’s Snowshow returns to its Royal Festival Hall as part of the festive celebrations, Oily Cart’s There Was An Old Woman will premiere in the intimate Blue Room from 13 December to 4 January.
Following previous hits including Ring A Ding Ding and In A Pickle, this brand new show will utilise Oily Cart’s immersive theatrical style to take families on a mysterious adventure using sights, scents, textures and sounds in a multi-sensory wonderland.
Rounding off the family offerings is Timber!, which returns to the venue from 21 to 31 December following its successful run last summer.
Featuring daring aerial acrobatics, stunts with lumberjack saws, clog-dancing and all manner of scary tricks and rowdy singing, Timber! sees three generations of a family circus troupe – from a 66-year-old grandfather to his three-year-old grandson – perform in this heart-warming show for everyone aged eight and older.