Maddie Moate’s Very Curious Christmas review – CBeebies star’s scientific wonderland
Maddie Moate’s USP is maximum enthusiasm. She never stops smiling, as any parent who has seen her CBeebies show Maddie’s Do You Know? will attest. On TV (and YouTube) she breezily explains how things work, zooming in with closeup cameras. And that’s much of what happens in this special Christmas live show, where the set-up is that Maddie is doing work experience at Santa’s workshop, and with the help of two elves, and the audience, has to solve some urgent problems in time for Mrs Claus’s Christmas party: what makes crackers go bang? Why do Brussels sprouts make us fart?
Moate is the kind of person who makes even chat about poos and farts edifying. It’s all extremely wholesome. A theatre full of children singing along to a song about how great science is. “Sci-ence, sci-ence / Making sense with evi-dence” it goes. “She’s very energetic,” says my seven-year-old, who thinks he’s far too grown up for CBeebies but grinned throughout this well put-together, entertaining hour. It covers electrical circuits and the water cycle with Stem-friendly raps and japes, as Moate brings all her festive cheer and best-ever-primary-school-teacher energy to proceedings.
Did you like learning about how crackers were made? I ask my son. “Not really,” he says, although I’m pretty sure he was enjoying it at the time. What he did love was the audience interaction, which this show does brilliantly, lots of joining in and call and response. Even before it starts there’s a quiz projected up on stage and kids emphatically shouting out answers, a clever way of quelling the “When is it starting?!” whines.
Book seats in the stalls to get the most out of it – there’s nothing worse than feeling like the fun (streamers shot from a giant cracker, snow, gingerbread-scented haze) is going on elsewhere and you can’t quite touch it. I ask my son about his favourite part. “The quiz!” he says. Did you learn anything new? “That mistletoe is really called ‘poo on a stick’!” he laughs delightedly. That is indeed the Anglo Saxon origin of the word. Scatological and educational: Moate has hit the kids’ entertainment sweetspot.
At Apollo theatre, London, until 4 January
