The Lowry was home to popular CBeebies programme In The Night Garden over the weekend as In The Night Garden Live was certainly able to put smiles on the audiences faces.

The audience was filled with young children, all eager before the performance to see their favourite characters and none seemed disappointed. Through their singing along and shouting out whenever a new character joined the stage, it was clear that In The Night Garden brought a lot of excitement to the youngsters.

The stage was covered in greenery with a large screen depicting the changes in location for each of the characters homes. The narrator, voiced by Actor Derek Jacobi was triumphant in the story telling and it was clear that the script was clearly aimed at toddlers with a lot of the lines being repeated two or three times so the children understood the narrative.

The first character we met was the shows most famous, Iggle Piggle, causing the audience to go crazy. Further appearances of favourite characters Upsy Daisy and Makka Pakka brought even further excitement. The characters all came in two variants- actors in costume  and puppet form with puppeteers appearing on stage.

Each character came with their own theme song with each being sang twice with the characters encouraging audience participation. The level of participation showed the popularity of the programme due to most children (and parents!) knowing the lyrics.

The audience was also filled with famous faces and their children including soap stars Samia Longchambon and Chris Bisson, also known as Coronation Street’s Maria Connor and Emmerdale’s Jai Sharma respectively.

In all, the stage show echoed the vibrancy and fun of the TV show which since 2007 and certainly brought joy to Salford on a rainy Sunday afternoon!

In The Night Garden Live will run until October at further venues including London’s Hackney Empire.

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