Published by The Stage, 9 April 2018. Michael Rosen’s Chocolate Cake is playing at the Polka Theatre, London, until 13 May 2018. The show is for children aged 4+. (It’s worth pointing out though that I took the baby girl (aged 19 months) and another toddler buddy (aged 22 months) along with me to a performance open to younger siblings and both of them were totally absorbed throughout.)
Based on a poem by the former Children’s Laureate, this diverting show from Polka Theatre artistic director Peter Glanville and singer-songwriter Barb Jungr tells the story of Michael, a little boy whose passion for chocolate cake threatens to ruin his brother’s birthday.
By blending the everyday – household routines and the journey to school – with flights of fancy – an extremely jolly Bake Off prize-giving and monsters at bath time – Glanville and Jungr create a theatrical environment that is at once familiar and fantastical to this audience of children aged four and up.
Witty writing and hummable tunes power the show along, and even though we (the adults, and probably a lot of the kids too) know exactly what’s going to happen from the word go, the denouement of Michael waking up in the middle of the night to eat an entire chocolate cake is still genuinely exciting.
Mark Houston as Michael, Todd Heppenstall as his older brother Joe and Aminita Francis as their mum are an effortlessly likeable trio, and some effective doubling swells the dramatis personae to six. Not all the music and singing is live, but there’s enough to give the piece a vibrant feel, and Jungr gives Houston, Heppenstall and Francis some lovely harmonies.
Verity Quinn’s modular set is entertaining in itself, folding and unfolding ingeniously to evoke different parts of Michael’s world, and quirky projections from Will and Joe provide a dollop of surreal humour. Lighting designer Dan Saggars really ramps up the tension when it comes to cake-eating time, making the eponymous dessert the real star of the show.