Robert Ormsby has worked with KidzStuff for ages and knows just what buttons to push for young audiences – lots of colour, action and interaction.  We meet in a forest a small coven of witches, the twins Grimble (Gene Alexander) and Fizzle (Felix Preval), smart and pretty respectively, and young Maria (Amy Straker) who’s learning her (witch)craft and is still using her learner’s wand. 

Charging in on his fine steed Steve comes Prince Good Looking (a dashing Mel Dodge) looking for a royal baby who went missing 17 years earlier.  Maria and the Prince don’t exactly hit it off, but after a turn as a toad the Prince continues on his Quest a better man. 

The littlies get to be Maria’s animal friends in the forest, to laugh at the weirdly crazy older witches, to sympathise with Maria who has to do all the chores, and help the Prince figure out which witch may be the princess.  Patrick Davies keeps his terrific cast in top gear for the whole show and they never falter – lovely (Kids) stuff.

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Which Witch is Which? is rough and tumble pantomime mixing song, dance, jokes, cross-dressing, a transformation scene and audience participation as a variation of the Cinderella story is told with gusto.

Prince Good Looking (Mel Dodge in glorious form) is searching for a long-lost princess. He stumbles across three sisters, two of whom, Grimble (Gene Alexander) and Fizzle (Felix Preval), are fully-fledged witches (they prefer to be called Dark Magic Practitioners), while Maria (Amy Straker), who only has a learner’s wand and doesn’t fly about on a broomstick, is the pretty one who does all the housework.

This good-natured show, which contains a new favourite line of mine (‘It’s always hard to cook your first toad.’), moves at a good pace though one or two of the obligatory songs, all very short, are unable to hold the interest of the very young.

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KidzStuff Theatre’s holiday offering is a new work, written by Rob Ormsby, made to look like an old folk tale except without the extremes of good and evil, scary bits or a even (perish the thought) a hero.

The answer to the puzzle it poses – not so much Which Witch is Which? as which witch is the lost princess? – is obvious right from the start. But the characters are fun, the songs are good, there’s a great chase sequence … And the message, that kindness is nice, is fair enough although it has nothing to do with the happy outcome; the princess wins the privileges of royalty regardless, by dint of her birth. Hmm …  

The plot is simple. Three witches live in the forest. Two are twins, but not identical. Grimble (Gene Alexander), is the older and supposedly smarter one. Fizzle (Felix Preval) is the younger and supposedly prettier one. The third, Maria (Amy Straker), is the kind one despite having to do all the cores: she’s ‘Cinderella’ to the twins’ ‘Ugly Sisters’.

But she gets audience participation help from the children in the audience, all clustered on the floor at the front. They get to be her animal friend helpers: Bluebirds, fish in the brook, elephants (to do the vacuuming) … And there’s a ‘Witchy Code’ thing that everyone does too.

But the older witches have lost their magic powers and Maria is only just discovering hers …

Prince Good Looking (Mel Dodge), a Knight of the Round Cushion astride his trusty hobby horse, has been on "a dangerous quest" for 17 years to find the lost princess and prove he, too, is worthy of note along with Prince Charming, whom he prefers not to mention. This is the only forest in all the world he has not searched.

Which brings me to my bemusement as to why obvious opportunities have not been taken to link the story to the audience’s own world by making it a New Zealand forest (the witches were blown way off course on their broomstick and fetched up in the remotest forest in the world) with native flora and fauna (a Moa to mow the lawns?).

The dialogue and song lyrics are crackling and witty. Just as I was wondering of too much was over the heads of the little ones, they hooted with delight at a gag about getting something from the spider’s website.

Preval and Alexander revel in the witchy sister roles. Straker, whose singing is pitch perfect and crystal clear, manages to make Maria a strong character through her determined kindness. Dodge plays the prat prince to the hilt of his toy cutlass. And the process by which Maria gets him off his ‘high horse’ is entertaining fun, with "the naughty step" being an instantly recognisable element.

In their new venue, the cosy Tararua Tramping Club Hall (often used as a rehearsal space and sometimes for the odd Fringe show) Which Witch is Which? seems to continue the KidStuff tradition of bringing ancient tales to life, but with a brand new play. 

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