Melbourne Comedy Festival – The Junior Mighty Little Puppet Show


Do you have kids? Looking for something fun for them to do during the school holidays? Take them along to the Town Hall for The Junior Mighty Little Puppet Show where children get to help make the characters and contribute to the story.

Devised by Rob Lloyd and built on his love of puppets and impro comedy, the Junior version of his Mighty Little show is wild and delightful. In the show I saw, Rob hosted and five expert improvisers took control of the Ritas – the faceless stars of the show. Rob invites children up to the stage to select from a range of eyes and noses to place on the Ritas and from there, the improvisers bring these new characters to life.

The audience also gets to contribute in other ways – shouting out favourite animals or names of the characters, which all feed into the stories that are created on stage. Yesterday, the audience was thrilled by a tale of a Man in search of chocolate, another story of cursed Egyptian artefacts and finally, Princess the Golfing Princess searching for her lost golf ball (Bally) in the forest of the Troll (don’t call him an ogre!)

Kids laughed and squealed with delight at the puppet antics and there’s an opportunity for them to get a photo with their favourite Rita after the show. Lloyd keeps everything moving and the kids entertained. And don’t worry, he also throws in jokes for the adults to keep us amused. How can you go past suggesting a cheetah’s favourite sport might be cricket? And when a child named Sophie has a to choose a puppet face, he assures us it’ll be easier for her than the original Sophie’s Choice.

Shout out to Jaklene, Petra, Scott, Jamie and Ryan, the wild and crazy improvisers who brought the puppets and stories to life. Every show has a new line-up and every show will be different. Go along more than once! A perfect school holiday treat.

The Junior Mighty Little Puppet Show is on all through the school holidays, every day except Monday.

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