This is fun, and well-pitched to its target audience: primary school kids and younger. Like most of them, right now, Seth (Jacob Wilson) and his friend Ricky (Kristi Atkins) are on the middle of their school holidays, and at a loose end. They’re having to hang around in their care-givers’ office-building, and forbidden to touch things or make a mess. Boring! 

But aha, Seth has a magical book, with “Once Upon A Time …” on the cover. Open it up and there’s music, and a way into an adventure … Still, they also have to ask for some cues from the kids in the audience. A small boy behind me shouts “Dinosaurs!”, so this time the actors have to improvise an extra little story about a dinosaur and a dragon. Still, they’ve promised pirates, and some kids helpfully pick up on this. 

Te Pūanga Whakaari Theatre Productions, a small professional company based in Feilding, presented another Seth and Ricky adventure last year, and the actors indicate at the end of this one that they’re likely to be back again. Here Seth and Ricky become not only a prince and a princess, but also pirates, with the kids suggesting pirate names for them. They come into conflict with the formidable pirate Captain over who has a box of treasure, the precious book and his parrot Molly Mabel, a large, fluffy, brightly coloured glove-puppet.

After a certain amount of by-play between Seth and Ricky, and between them and the kids, and singing and dancing, they get into the action proper; go to sea on the ship and encounter the pirate ship’s crew: four doughty Pi-Rats (again, glove puppets). There’s quite a bit of dashing around, tumbling over the office sofa and clashing of swords, but Seth and Ricky together are finally too much for the Captain. So it’s scary but not too scary. After that, it’s time to come out of their adventure and prepare to go home, but maybe have a bit of fun on the way.

The two younger actors, Jacob Wilson and Kristi Atkins, are lively and expressive, with good interactions and synergy, and Craig Geenty doubles effectively as Seth’s Uncle Jeff and the dreaded pirate Captain, with or without his hook. And (as they say) there’s never a dull moment in a show that, at about fifty minutes, is of a good length for kids to sit through.   

As it happens, the set for the evening show on at Centrepoint – The Mercy Clause – is an office, so it doubles as Uncle Jeff’s office, although he’s away most of the time, so the adventure can happen. 

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