Creating quality children’s theatre is the hardest task in the performing arts. Children are hard to engage, easily distracted and quick to notice when they are being patronised. 

Those who make children’s theatre carry a load of responsibility as well, for these are the next generation of theatre-goers, so it is vital to our survival as practitioners to get these kids addicted to live performance. It is disappointing therefore, that the Fortune Theatre’s school holiday season of The Day My Bum Went Psycho falls short of what it could be.

This production is adapted from Andy Griffiths’ bestselling and award-winning book The Day My Bum Went Psycho.  This is a gloriously disgusting Indiana Jones-like adventure story, starring the gun-wielding Eleanor Sterne, her father Silas, and of course, the young and innocent Zack Freeman who awakes one night to find his bum has detached itself and has joined a massive bum-rally with thousands of other rogue bums intending to take over the world!

If you haven’t read this book -READ IT NOW! Bums! Farts! Gro-osss! Essentially this book has the potential to be a fabulous piece of theatre as it is based on the ultimate mythological quest: young man and friends save the world!  

Now, I admit that it is always problematic watching theatre or film adaptations of favourite books (I had great difficulty in watching the first Harry Potter films, but I seem to have got over myself now). But I feel that this Fortune Theatre production has attempted a faithful adaptation while losing sight of the primal anarchic joy which informs and powers the book.  This production is a bit ….clean.

In the programme notes director Laura Cooney writes that in order to direct this production she has had to disregard her notions of appropriate viewing for young children. Now, I have the greatest admiration for Laura Cooney, who is an experienced director of children’s theatre, with a wide-ranging portfolio. Her name would be recognisable to Dunedin audiences as the director of Roald Dahl’s The Twits in 2007 and last year’s James and the Giant Peach.

But I would strongly suggest that it is this touch of squeamishness that has lent a self-consciously manic quality to this production, a slightly desperate air of "let’s all have fun." This is particularly apparent in the varied nature of the performances. The seven performers energetically play a multiplicity of wonderfully exaggerated cartoon-like characters. However, with some, flailing physicality and a character voice created through straining and distorting the throat is exhausting to watch. 

Mark Neilson and David Goldthorpe, the two most experienced actors, stand out in their portrayals of those essential members of the B-Team, Kisser and Kicker.  Goldthorpe in particular (possibly as a result of his experience with Capital E and KidzStuff) is relaxed and interacting with the children in the first two rows of the audience.

It was always going to be a problem realising the book’s gloriously extended imaginative world on stage. For example, the producer has to include such elements as bums planning to taking over the world by building up methane gas in the Buttcano!, the great Windy Desert and flying butt squadrons, not to mention Stenchgator the Great Unwiped Butt! What theatre company has the budget to creatively realise these imaginative flights?

Set design by Peter King, and construction by King and Matt Best, wonderfully visualise the bumcano island and Bum Shelter # 5, which then acts as a suitably epic backdrop for Zack’s journey.  Rebecca de Prospo’s sound design is fabulously rude, if a tad loud: a mixture of video game sounds, and some other ‘sound effects’ that suggest she may have been hanging out in the boys bathroom (‘cos girls aren’t as smelly). But overall, the production values are uneven.

There are some fantastic set-pieces. A high-light for me is Marama Grant (Smacker) leading the B-team across the volcano’s crater by smacking holes in the crater walls. This scene has true comic book energy and great dramatic lighting effects. But this quality is lacking in the earlier part of the production.

In particular, the scenes in which the B-team are travelling in the Bum-mobile seem to have no lighting effects designed to give focus or create a sense of travel; in fact the backdrop remains extremely well-lit while the characters are all gathered at the front of the stage. Focussing the lighting effects on the car and the characters might have given a greater sense of urgency to their flight.

Now, this is my personal opinion and I am willing to be written off as a grouchy old fart. But I believe that touring companies such as Capital E have shown how much the effective use of stage effects, such as puppetry, can add to the quality and enjoyment of theatre for children. So, dear Fortune, please do not use puppets unless you have performers with the skills to do it well.

The shadow-puppets at the beginning are embarrassingly bad, and overall the puppetry is clumsily done. The scene in which Zack crosses the Sea Of Bums is delightfully done, however, which high-lights for me how under-rehearsed the production seems overall.

If asked to mark a report card, I would have to say that the Fortune Theatre could do better. By focussing on and emphasizing the surface rudeness this production has paradoxically de-valued the shock value of the "bums" and "farts." The book works because for all its deliberate disgusting silliness, the characters are engaging and individual, and we care about the outcome.

I also feel that by aiming this production narrowly at the sensibilities of a 10 year old boy, it makes it less suitable for family entertainment. And for the adult audience member, the uneven nature of the performances and the production values are both distracting and tiring.
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The world’s bums are mutinous, plotting to rearrange human anatomy by relocating themselves from their sat-upon position to the prime spot between the shoulders, and forcing heads to move to the lower regions. As things turn nasty, 12-year-old Zack joins the B-Team, fighting to save the world from the demagogic Great White Bum and his evil plans.

Hadley R. Taylor (Zack), Aimee Pollard (Eleanor), Mark Neilson (the Kicker), David Goldthorpe (the Kisser), Marama Grant (the Smacker), Daniel Armstrong (Maurice) and Gary Miller (assorted roles) bring enthusiasm and agility to their performances, and are complemented by special effects including puppets and projected images. Much of the action is comic-book bam! splat! pow! stuff.

Rebecca de Prospo’s sound design includes rap music, noises of the kinds that accompany video games, and others suggesting various bodily functions. Sometimes the sound effects overpower the dialogue, even though the latter features rather a lot of hoarse shouting.

The Day My Bum Went Psycho has been adapted for the stage by director Laura Cooney from the children’s novel by Andy Griffiths. As Cooney acknowledges in the programme notes, "This play has no great meaning or educational value. It is just fun."

The assistant reviewer, who is almost 7, pronounced it "really cool," and the theatre was nearly full of primary-school-age children visibly and audibly having a great time. There’s no denying the appeal to kids of this kind of just-permitted rudeness.

As you may have gathered, I didn’t particularly like it: in fact, I have seldom seen anything sillier. Despite the kids’ obvious enjoyment, I can’t escape the feeling that there are much better plays for families than this one.
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