Children’s Shows (Theatre)

Words : Jacqueline Ross
Image: Laurence Winram

4 Stars

Tongue Twister is a really clever concept for a show. Nostalgic over a ‘she sells sea shells’ early memory with his grandfather and then hit with the realisation that his peers could speak more languages than him, our performer set out to learn a little bit of every language there is – beginning with tongue twisters.

A lot of thought and effort has gone into this show, the set is vibrant with multimedia, the costumes are creatively colourful and clever, the physical theatre aspects blend with the accompanying music and there is a little bit of comedy and audience participation. 

Moreover the show explores many of the thirteen languages our performer has learned. With everything from Gaelic, Japanese, Norwegian and Urdu covered it certainly provides an educational insight into the particularly prevalent sounds of each. Linguists would have a field day!  

As a children’s show I’m not sure it would be top of the list for engagement. Hearing tongue twisters in many different languages is maybe not as much fun as it sounds. However the overall production was certainly highly visual, at any given scene it could easily have been an extract from a children’s TV programme, it had that kind of perfect look.

Hats off to our performer who was not only a whizz at tongue twisters but who had perfected his craft of merging them in different languages, speeding them up, slowing them down and using an impressive array of headgear and props to bring them to life.   

Tongue Twister
Cromdale Theatre at Pleasance at EICC
11:30
8-22 Aug