Hansel is a trumpet. Gretel turns into a flute. The bad mother is represented by the feminine cello, while the dad (woodcutter by profession) looks like a double bass. “Hansel and Gretel,” the musical fairy tale based on Jan Brzechwa’s text, combines entertainment with education. The junior audience plays a very important part in the performance. Equipped with a percussion instrument from the Orff educational set: triangle, maracas, castanets, jingle bells, rattle or drum, everyone will be asked to play sounds such as the rustling of the trees, noises made by animals or a creaking door. This interactive performance was devised with the youngest audiences in mind (children aged 2 and over). It introduces kids to the living world of instruments and various sounds, familiarizes them with strangely sounding names, encourages them to come on stage and, hopefully, to become active consumers of art in the future. The entire performance oozes colour and warmth: the trees are shaped like trumpets, and the witch’s cottage is a double bass made of gingerbread. Forest flowers blossom under Gretel’s feet, and small animals scurry across the grass: a fox, an owl and a rabbit. Most importantly, the fairy tale has a happy ending—even the witch turns out to be a good-natured woman, who only wanted to give the noisy children a little fright.
Premiere: 8 XII 2012
