Kipper Tie

Reviews of Past Productions

Mole
Millicent
Hansel & Gretel

Edinburgh Evening News
The Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business
.Scatological? Very. Mad? Slightly. Brilliant? Absolutely.
Kipper Tie are bloody good. This is a show which treads that fine line - between amusing the kids and giving their parents a laugh - to perfection.
There are plenty of good songs, delivered with some excellent harmonies by the two females and a healthy dose of slapstick. The combination of music and daft humour means the show is suitable for quite young children - there is nothing scary and lots of excitement. There are also a few adult references to keep the mums and dads chuckling...In short, it's energetic, it's funny and it's worth taking the kids to see. They'll love it - and so will you.

Sunday Herald
The Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business
The Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business. is everything successful children's theatre should be. Jim Hartley plays all of [the] creatures as a series of affectionate and witty cartoon-like figures. Lindsey Bowden as Mole also gives a deeply endearing, crisp performance. The script is sharp and leaves just the right amount of space for several instances of audience involvement... there are lashings of snappy, catchy tunes. Each of the animals gets his own showcase song, and each song is taken from a new genre.
And if that weren't enough to make it brilliant, the fact that it's about poo surely is.

Scotsman
The Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business
This show is a complete pile of poo - and we loved it! Based on a popular Children's book, it tells the story of a mole who wakes up one day to find a large turd on his head. As a brand new company for children, Kipper Tie clearly have bags of talent and can belt out a song and trip out a dance with skill and confidence.

The List
The Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business
Nobody likes to wake up with a dollop of poo on their head - especially when you don't know whose it is. Finding himself in just such a situation, the loveable Mole sets off to find the bottom from whence it came. Was it the bird? The horse? Or maybe the pig? No, they're all the wrong texture, colour and smell. Yes, it's that graphic, folks. Filled with fun characters and silly songs, Kipper Tie's adaptation of Werner Holzwarth's storybook is so lavatorial, how could any child fail to love it?

The Stage
Millicent
Duska Radosavljevic
Kipper Tie's approach is very simple - they make theatre about children's problems in ways that are extremely accessible to children. Its inaugural show - The Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business - was a subtle way of introducing the notion of toilet training. Two years on, they make a show about the second biggest taboo - the arrival of a sibling. Their trick is that they never try to reason with their audience. Instead, they just tell a story, befriending the kids, championing their view of the world and sympathising with them. In order to introduce the benefits of having a brother or a sister, Kipper Tie tell a story of Millicent - the girl who gets just what she wants. It is fun for a while but in the end Millicent ends up all alone until she learns how to share. The story is jazzed up with catchy songs and dance numbers and while the kids hum to 'Life's better with two - or three or four or more', they've got the message, without ever knowing there was one.

ThreeWeeks
Millicent
This is the show for all parents planning their second child, to take their first one to. Millicent always plays on her own and has no friends so is devastated when her parents decide to try for a little brother or sister. Bring on the voyage of discovery where Millicent travels to the beach and under the sea, learning that sharing is fun. The acting is entirely suitable for a very young audience in this enthusiastic and comical show with fun musical interludes. Watch out for the brilliant Mexican Mussels having a party.

buxtonfringe.com
Hansel and Gretel
Helen Grady
What a wonderful surprise this was! I heard one audience member say that this was the best thing they had seen at the Fringe this year - and I can see why. Kipper Tie have just completed a 5 month National Tour and the experience, professionalism and polished performances you might expect from such a background were very evident in this lively, funny and thoroughly enjoyable show.The play is a new take on the story of Hansel and Gretel with many other fairy story characters thrown in. There is wonderful singing and slick movement and some fairly sophisticated humour to keep adults and older children very happy. At no point is the audience patronised and the assumption is made that we will "get" the jokes, which I think is the secret of the show's success. The play is written by Jim Fowler and Bernie C. Byrnes and it is a scintillating script with something for everyone to enjoy. All in all a cracking good show which I would recommend to the child in everyone!

Hairline
Hansel and Gretel
Alexander Donald
We are all familiar with the story of Hansel and Gretel - two children abandoned in the woods by the evil stepmother who encounter a witch in her gingerbread house. Or are we? Kipper Tie's interesting new take on the classic fairytale adds a modern twist. As the story unfolds we meet a variety of interesting characters, including the children-stealing Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, celebrity Red Riding Hood and a follically obsessed Goldilocks. The songs are well written with clever lyrics, particularly Goldilocks'.

The Stage
Hansel and Gretel
Duska Radosavljevic
Over the last few years Kipper Tie has made a small but significant contribution to children's theatre by treating its audience with respect and dignity. By consciously avoiding the dramatic and musical genres stereotypically recognisable as 'children's', it bravely resolved to bring jazz, gospel and rock'n'roll to the nursery rhyme. Equally, in choosing its stories it has gone for plausible dramas that happen in the world of children and handled them with immense sensitivity and a great sense of humour. This is still children's theatre of the Kipper Tie variety - its main objective being to say that evil stepmothers are not always evil, just as the Little Red Ridinghood is not all that good and that the Big Bad Wolf can be bad for no reason at all and still charm your socks off.