KidzStuff’s holiday shows that have been performed for many years now have recently been getting formulaic and repetitive, not that the young audiences seemed to have minded in the least. However, things are a-changin’.

There’s a new, sleeker, uncluttered look to their latest offering, The Ant and the Grasshopper. Gone are the bits and pieces of scenery that might have been painted by the younger members of the audience or appeared on a primary school wall. Gone too is the obligatory green message tagged onto traditional European fairy tales such as Cinderella or Puss-in-Boots which were performed in the boisterous English pantomime style. 

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of audience participation in Ant and it seems to be a little more imaginative than the traditional which-way-did-he-go-he-went-that-way. One can get to snore loudly and wriggle and squirm like Wallace the worm.

However, Sarah Somerville, Richard Dey and his excellent cast have taken Aesop’s tale with its moral about working hard today so you’ll be able to eat tomorrow and given it a slight twist which is expressed in the play’s subtitle: All work and no play can sometimes pay!

Nick Zwart’s lazy Grasshopper dreams of having his name up in glowworms and being bigger then the Beatles. He attempts to persuade the novice worker Ant (Deborah Rea) to stop looking for crumbs for the winter and enter showbiz with him. Zwart also appears as Queen Ant with a beard! Jessica Robinson plays an autocratic ant Sergeant, Wallace the Worm, a Ladybird, and a French moth called Moliere.

Richard Dey has designed attractive projected slides of scenery that the audience will immediately recognize. The small stage is left bare for the actors to tell the tale which, surprisingly, suggests that singing, dancing and acting are not just wasting time but hard work.
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A change of pace these hols for Kidzstuff. Instead of the broad panto style favoured of late they’ve opted for Sarah Somerville’s adaptation of Aesop’s 6th century BC fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, which teaches us: "It is best to prepare for the days of necessity."

From the moment the worker Ants (Deborah Rea and Nick Zwart) soldier on to have the key message – "Find food!" – drilled into them by the Ant Sergeant (Jessica Robinson), the eager young audience buys the premise.

Even when the main Ant with the tinsley feelers (Rea), out on her first day as a worker, confesses she likes to dance, the little ones know she must not be distracted by the leapingly lazy Grasshopper Jumping Jack Flash (Zwart). Sure they dance well together but when he suggest they run away to a works of bright glow-worms and show biz, the kids are loud and clear in their opposition. Interesting.

Also encountered through spring, summer and autumn are a somewhat Cockney Worm (?) and an exotic French moth called Moliere (both played by Robinson). Seasons and locations are effectively signalled with AV projections which luxuriate in images of native bush … Lovely.

An important moment comes when the benign and bearded Queen (Zwart) patiently explains the ant work ethic to our young hero Ant, whereupon she goes to work with a will …

Audience participation verges on the gratuitous in that – apart from warning the Ant about the Grasshopper, which the kids do spontaneously – it is rarely essential to the plot. But it does have the virtue of giving the audience a chance to release a bit of energy so they don’t get fidgety.

When winter comes and the ants hunker down for a few months of well-deserved feasting, Jack has nowhere to go and nothing to eat. The moth’s empty cocoon is no use to him, he can’t fit into a worm hole and the dead leaves have no nutritional value. (Conveniently the script side-steps the evergreen nature of NZ natives, but at the opening show the kids were quick to point him to the bright green grass on one of the set’s painted side panels).

Will the ruthlessness of nature prevail?

SPOILER WARNING … The resolution is ingenious: the hero Ant has been rewarded for all her hard work by being made the Minister of Entertainment and she gives Jack a job as entertainer for all the potentially stir-crazy ants. They’ll feed him as long as he works hard at his job. (I like it that entertaining is characterised as more work than play.) ENDS

Director Richard Dey and his excellent cast set a steady pace and relaxed tone that brings good focus to the story’s reason for being. Their reward for not talking down to their audience is a robust level of participation.

Designer Elyse Ripia with the cast and crew have created the simple but effective settings and costumes. Along with lighting designer and operator Deb McGuire, composer and sound designer Thomas Press they deliver Aesop’s universal and timeless message with entertaining flair. 
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