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What a Superhero Wants For Christmas

This wonderfully accessible and reassuring piece of children’s theatre is worth watching if your children are feeling lonely and isolated at the moment.

Calling all potential superheroes! Join Zinnia on her quest to find Santa, who she wants to help make her some friends as she has been so busy helping everyone else her only companion has been Zoop, her favourite pencil rubber.

Created by Richard and Abby Young, What A Superhero Wants For Christmas is a really delightful story that explores what it means to be lonely and how making friends and talking to people can make everything better. It is completely accessible for all children and features some lovely moments in which the audience can participate in and to make them feel like heroes.

Richard Young’s story is wonderfully reassuring and comforting as it unfolds – with some delightful characters such as BB the Bee and Ed the Robot who Zinnia interacts with on her quest to meet Santa. It has a lovely playful quality about it that really helps to keep the audience engaged. But it is also filled with heaps of imagination that comes across well in Rachel Maddix’s sleek production.

But it is the songs written by James Hughes that really form the centre of the show. Filled with lovely lyrics that again really enhance the message of the show including “nobody should feel they are moving mountains on their own” – nobody should feel as though they are alone and this is particularly poignant for children given how their lives have been so disrupted in the last year.

Elsewhere, Nancy Betton’s costumes enhance the fun and imaginative qualities of the show and Chris Lince’s film editing keeps the show flowing nicely – keeping it consistently focused.

Perhaps the only thing I would say is that it would be great to see the story perhaps extended just a little bit longer so that children get a chance to really embrace the characters more.

This aside, it is great that Tall Tails Theatre Company have been able to produce and present this show for thanks to funding from the Arts Council, to offer children reassurance that they aren’t alone. It is an imaginative and fun show that offers a ray of sunshine for all those with little budding superheroes.

By Emma Clarendon

THE MENDIPS ROCK

What a Superhero Wants For Christmas

Superheroes Assemble!
Join Zinnia and Zoop on a quest to find Santa Claus in Tall Tails Theatre Company’s new production What a Superhero Wants for Christmas.
Zinnia, a superhero, is so busy helping others that the only companion she has is Zoop, her favourite pencil rubber from training school. This Christmas, she is going on a quest to find Santa Claus, all she wants to ask for is a new friend. She follows him around the world on Christmas Eve, facing many challenges and meeting interesting people along the way.
What a Superhero Wants for Christmas shares themes of loneliness, sadness, courage, love and friendship, and of course brings plenty of holiday cheer. In joyful colours and costumes, audiences are taken through four entertaining, original songs and meet an array of charismatic, whimsical characters. Viewers are encouraged to join in the fun with singing, movement and dancing as they wish.
This really is a lovely piece of children’s theatre, perfect for your pre-school and junior school aged children to engage in the arts at a time when cultural venues are closed and we are unable to access our usual festive pantomimes and shows.
The performance is also super inclusive for which I applaud Tall Tails. They have incorporated a wide range of access provision into What a Superhero Wants for Christmas, in order to ensure the film can reach all families its captioned, audio described and they worked with a Makaton director. Sign is used by the characters, with disability-friendly, inclusive production, themes and language throughout. Tall Tails Theatre Company secured funding from Arts Council England to support this activity.