iTheatre's The Ant and the Grasshopper

There are two places that I really love to take the kids: to museums and to the theatre. Visits to the park have their place, but the museums and the theatre are where I think one can be exposed to stories which are a sum of life's experiences. All served up with a dose of fun as well. 

As part of Nomi's birthday treat this year, we went to catch iTheatre's current production, The Ant and the Grasshopper, which is currently playing at the Jubilee Hall at Raffles Hotel.  Based on the famous fable by Aesop, The Ant and the Grasshopper is the tale of a busy ant who thought of nothing but the need to prepare for the upcoming winter and a grasshopper who was interested in anything but that. So as the ant worked and stored up food, the grasshopper sang and played and made merry. But when winter does eventually come what will happen to each of them?

We had previously caught iTheatre's staging of Grimm's Fairy Tales and were engaged by the re-telling of familiar stories with humour and music thrown in. I therefore expected much of the same in this production of The Ant and the Grasshopper. Fortunately, we were not disappointed. There was plenty of action, with obsessively busy Ms Antoinette the Ant and happy-go-lucky Criminy the grasshopper joined by a happy motley bunch of characters, like busy-buzzy-bodies Bee One and Bee Two and Nessa the Caterpillar. There were plenty of lessons for both young and old -- from the importance of both work and play, and also being receptive to change. And there were plenty of songs and lots of laughs. 

Of the two kids, Noey enjoyed the show more. He sat and rapt attention, and was heard laughing away at points. Days after the show, he was still coming up to me to talk about funny bits that he'd enjoyed and laugh over them with his sister. I'd say the show was quite a hit in his books.

The Ant and the Grasshopper runs from 26 February to 15 March 2014 at Jubilee Hall, Raffles Hotel so there's still time to catch it before it closes, though I've been told that tickets are in limited supply. Tickets are priced at $32 and $30 and can be purchased from Sistic.

* We received complimentary tickets to the show for the purpose of this review. All production photographs are courtesy of iTheatre and all opinions remain strictly my own.