March 9 – “Paddington Bear?”

Well, here’s one I never thought I would be saying.  Yesterday we went to see a play.  Now, that in itself is not that unusual a statement.  I love theater and pretty much any play unless it has an inordinate amount of singing with no plot development.  But this one was truly unique.  Paddington Bear in a Jam.

 

Yep.  Paddington Bear.  It was a kid’s thing performed at the Grand Theater in downtown Galveston.  We were invited to attend with Christina and Noa and Ezra.  Christina and the kids swung by and gave me a ride.  Chris had to go to cardiac rehab first, but she was done in plenty of time to meet up with us at the theater.  In fact, we both got really good parking spaces ride across the street from our destination.  They got the tickets as part of a larger group, too, so we didn’t even have to wait to get inside.  Good thing, too.  It was drizzling rain and cold.  

 

But back to Paddington Bear.  Apparently he wasn’t a thing in the eighties when our boys were prolific readers of children’s literature.  If Sesame Street (Kel’s favorite) or Mr. Rogers (Josh’s favorite) didn’t have it as a guest star, or if it wasn’t flying on the back of Dumbo (Nathan’s favorite), then we didn’t see much of it.  I think it was also set in England, so maybe it was a cultural thing. 

 

The play itself was cute, I suppose.  Paddington came to his neighbor’s house to borrow a cup of sugar and ended up causing disaster after disaster.  The bear character was actually performed by three puppeteers.  Performed really well, I might add, although I did see a puppeteer head creep up one time.  But that happened when the bear was walking around in a circle.  Not an easy task to achieve, by any means.  The whole thing was kind of like an attempt at a live action cartoon.  And as a quick aside … I don’t historically do well with watching cartoons.  I may or may not have dozed off a time or two.  Ezra seemed entranced by the whole performance.  I think Noa got a little bored after a while, but she did enjoy the slapstick comedy when it occurred.  So did the theater full of elementary school children sitting all around us. 

 

I understand there is supposed to be a whole series of these children’s theater features coming to town.  Hey.  Sign me up.  I still have a little bit of Tigger left in me from high school …

 

1 John 3:18 says, “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

 

Father, please be with all of those little kids who came to see the play.  Keep them healthy and happy, and give them a constant supply of Paddington Bears to entertain them.  Amen.