Tick-Tock Time Machine

I’ve just come back from taking Reuben to see “Andy and Mike’s Tick-Tock Time Machine” at the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury. It’s not often that I come away from Kid’s Theatre wanting to blog about it, but this was absolutely superb.

Forget all the rubbish you see on TV these days for kids (all the mindless cartoons and so on) – this is the real deal. When you watch him live you can see why Andy Day was employed by the BBC for his CBeebies role, and you also wonder why Mike James isn’t on the box with him. This is the kind of material that our licence fees should be spent on – top quality original drama that appeals to both children and their parents (some of the jokes are in there just for the mums and dads – watch out for the “flush capacitor”).

Tick-Tock Time Machine has everything – a great story (with clear paths for many many sequels, or episodes if Auntie Beeb does the smart thing and commissions it as a TV series), funny jokes for both kids and adults, blatant audacious copyright breaches, clever references to a number of movies, a good game of Egyptian Handball and not-so subtle but nevertheless amusing merchandising! It’s quite simply the best thing I’ve seen on stage since Gayle dragged me off to see Wicked in London for my birthday almost half a decade ago.

If you’ve got young kids of nursery or infant school age, hurry along to their website to see if there’s a showing near you. It’ll be the the best ninety minutes you spend with your offspring for quite a while. You might also want to check out their Facebook page.

Now, back to writing this book…