Elmo meets Macbeth

I've been pondering over the last couple of days whether you could get more diametrically opposite than stage shows of "Elmo's World Tour" and "Macbeth"?

Both were showing last weekend at the Canberra Theatre and for the first time in our lives Amy and I went to the theatre twice in one day. Elmo during the day (with the kids) and then sans les enfants in the evening.

We've been to a few stage productions of kids' shows, mostly all excellent, but the thing that set Elmo apart from the rest was the sheer noise of it all. We'd bought our tickets from an online offer (which had halved the ticket price) and I imagine people around us had too. They still weren't that cheap at $18 bucks a throw but for many there the show seemed little more than an intrusion to their conversations. Our 50 minute show was like watching a DVD overdubbed with the audio commentary of some other film.

Inevitably the age demographic of the audience between Elmo and Macbeth differed significantly, but at Elmo adults and children alike just chatted through the entire performance. To be honest the show wasn't that well put together, but a decent enough amount of singing and dancing (and the odd Sesame Street gag) but for most people it was little more than a "live" TV show. The people behind us virtually shouted their conversation to each other while their kid (older than Audrey and Eli) had a meltdown of all meltdowns and squealed and screamed throughout Elmo's entire visits to China and India...  

To be honest I was glad when it was over, but both Eli and Audrey could still relate huge chunks of the 'plot' to us both, so they'd obviously not been as put off by the noise as we had been. During the show they had both sat glued to their seats watching (leaving us as proud parents).

Macbeth in the evening was put on by the Bell Shakespeare Company, an Australian production company and was excellent. We got great seats in the middle of the stalls, which meant we got to experience the full gore in a couple of the more grizzly scenes.

A shame really Macbeth hadn't been around earlier in the day to sort out some of the noisy kids and parents we had been sat with at Elmo's show.

Here's a clip of Elmo visiting Australia....