‘What’s Bluey?” a friend asked when I mentioned that I was taking my kids to see its latest incarnation as a stage play. And with that, the last person on earth somehow unaware of the Australian TV phenomenon had been reached.
To say Bluey is ubiquitous is an understatement. You can play a Bluey computer game, brush your teeth with Bluey toothpaste and even rent the Bluey house on Airbnb. When the marching band for an American football team in Indiana played the Bluey theme tune before a game, the crowd eagerly chanted back the words: “Mum! Dad! Bingo! Bluey!”
Where Peppa Pig taught children about things, Bluey teaches us all about emotions. Often big and complex ones, handled with an unbelievably deft touch. With a story by Joe Brumm and music by Joff Bush, Bluey’s Big Play stays true to this. While the stage puppets act out a tale about parents wanting to sit and play with their phones rather than their children (awkward for some adults watching), within it is a sweet lesson about being a good sibling. Big girl Bluey doesn’t like her little sister Bingo copying everything she does – can parents Bandit and Chilli help her realise that when you lift up your sibling you can become taller yourself?
There are a few jokes parents will appreciate (I enjoyed Chilli being surprised she won musical statues as she never normally wins in the title music) but this show – with its wacky dances, call-and-response segments and characters running into each other – is aimed squarely at the kids. Romy, seven, liked it “when they found the chatterbox toy and it started disco-ing”. Four-year-old Teddy enjoyed the cameo from Lucky’s Dad: “Because he got boinged around.”
Both kids said they especially enjoyed it when the kids hid Bandit’s phone because he was always on it. Er, does that remind them of anything in their own house?
“No!”
Nobody plays on their phone too much in our house?
“Never!”
Wow. Nobody is going to believe a word of this review now.
It wasn’t all fun and laughter. Romy didn’t like it when Bluey was telling Bingo she couldn’t copy her, and Teddy agreed that this bit made him sad. Did it make him think about his own big sister?
“It made me think she’s a good sister!” he says.
I swear I haven’t paid them to say this. I have it all on tape, your honour! Bluey’s Big Play has somehow turned my children into little angels. Anything else to add? “Yes,” says Romy. “Why, whenever we go to the theatre, do we have to review it for the Guardian afterwards?”
Anyway, my one bit of advice for families is to watch the emotionally harrowing Onesies episode before they come – this way you will have the backstory about Chilli’s sister Brandy, who struggled to have children herself and distances herself from her nieces as a result. (I told you the emotions get deep!) Despite the play being for kids, it still has an emotional wallop of an ending which left me wondering if I could compose myself in time before the lights went up. Luckily, attention is taken from my reddening eyes by a grand finale of audience keepy-uppy: huge bouncing balls are hurled into the crowd for this. There is manic screaming, there is wild laughter, there is my four-year-old son crying because he’s not managed to touch one yet.
Romy gives it “five stars if it’s out of five, or eight if it’s out of 10”, which makes no strict kind of mathematical sense but which I guess you can call a solid 9/10. Teddy is still in a strop about not touching the balloons when I take his critical reading and opts for 1/10. What about before the balloons happened? “Eight out of 10,” he sniffs.
Just like the TV show, it seems Bluey’s Big Play knows how to tap into every emotion.
At Royal Festival Hall, London, until 7 January. Then touring
