March 29. Day 89. Show time

Children make the most awesome audiences, except when they don't. That sounds like an ultimate contradiction but it isn't. Let me explain. A child enters a theatre with no real expectation and an open mind. They watch what is presented to them and react according to their minds and hearts. They don't behave as they think they "should" or according to what is polite. They call it as they see it and they do so with enthusiasm. Either you nail it or you don't. There are no half measures. Today's audience in Concerto for Harmony and Presto at the Cremorne Theatre at QPAC totally got it. The debase and Out of the Box Production is a theatrical masterpiece for kids aged three up which combines theatre, physical comedy, clowning, puppetry and some rather awesone percussion. Harmony's family falls on hard times so she is sent to market to sell the family's beloved gramophone. But just like Jack when his mother  insisted he sell his beloved cow to make ends meet, Harmony had other ideas. She decided to busk. She saw Presto and his junk cart on the adjoining market stall as being a threat to her plan. But then, Hey Presto when they worked together they were able to make beautiful music and a bucket load of much-needed cash to take home to mum. There is, or course, a huge irony that almost none of the children in the audience would have the slightest idea what a gramophone is and therefore why Harmony might be so determined not to lose it might not be immediately apparent. But it wouldn't matter. The colour, the clowning, the simple story and the silliness of it they took to with an obvious and infectious enthusiasm. They laughed, the clapped and they left happy (as did those of us slightly over the three plus age group).