Picture: Ellie Kurttz Photography
Handa’s Surprise continues at the Little Angel Theatre Studios, London until 16 April 2022.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Adapted from Eileen Browne’s much-loved 1995 picture book, this 35-minute show is effectively a mini opera for preschoolers. It’s both charming and engaging. All the young children I saw it with were entranced.
Different fruits are celebrated in song, in an African language, in a repeated melody and there’s a little tune which I know as ‘The Farmer’s in His Den’. Rhythm drives the action.
The music is very simple and consists almost entirely of rounds based on major chords. One child, at the performance I saw, was singing some of it back to them before we were even halfway through.
Rujenne Green and Hannah Akhalu both have clear, sweet voices and their intonation is excellent. There is no accompaniment although the two actors are on stage smiling and rocking and sweeping to steelpan tunes before the show starts.
The plot is straightforward. Handa (Akhalu) wants to take a gift of fruit to her friend Akeyo (Green) but all the fruit she gathers is eaten by animals she meets on the way. So it’s fortunate that a goat knocks some tangerines off a tree.
Tangerines – and every child in the audience is given a segment – turn out to be Akeyo’s favourite. And that’s the surprise.
The fruit-eating animals are puppets (by Peter O’Rourke) which either emerge from the edge of Sophia Lovell Smith’s sandy African set or are assembled from around Green’s person.
The delicate teetering monkey is attractive and we get a neat zebra from inverting a neck sling that Akhalu is wearing. The giraffe is probably the tour de force, moving with spindly elegance on its bamboo legs.
The children and their parents are seated on the floor around three sides of the square playing space in Marleen Vermeulen’s production. All the puppets tour the audience to wave at, inspect, gently peck the children in the audience which goes down well.
Susan Elkin
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