Children’s Events The West Australian Spiegeltent 14 February
To begin with, let’s get the facts out of the way: Peter Combe is the Australian legend of children’s entertainment. ‘King of the Kids’ since the eighties, this is a man who has produced seven gold albums, two platinum, performed sell-out shows at the Sydney Opera House (twice), and claimed three ARIA awards.
The Fringe World Spiegeltent rejoiced in his silly.
Accompanied by Phil on keyboard and the lively all-singing, all-dancing troupe of girls from the WA Performance School, Combe filled the space with his matchless warmth, humour and vivacity.
‘Would you like some jelly and some ice-cream in your socks?’ he asks us in marvellous outrage. ‘Would you like porridge in your trousers?’
‘NO!’ shrieks back the audience. No indeed.
Maintaining the attention of under-tens is quite a feat, as I’m sure any parent is well aware. But Combe is a veteran and master player of that game. He had bubs in the audience waving their chubby arms in glee; toddlers thumping out their boogie in the aisles; ten-year olds doing circles around him with blue balloons; and notably, a conspicuous gaggle of twenty-somethings recalling with love and ringing tenor their cassette-playing, newspaper-hatted, ‘bellyflop-in-a-pizza’ childhoods. The show’s finale was crowned with old-time favourites ‘Spaghetti Bolognaise’, ‘Mr Clicketty Cane’, ‘Juicy Juicy Green Grass’ and the enormously catchy ‘Newspaper Mama’. Car rides home will resound with renditions thereof, but the only uncertainty lies in whether it’ll be the adults or the kids leading the sing-song.
It may be that this review is infected with the bias of extreme nostalgia from an original Comberbitch. But honestly – there is not one on this continent who hasn’t a special place in their heart for this composer of anthems for the Australian youth.
Bless him. Bless him and his quirky berserkey turkey from Turkey.
Wash Your Kids in Orange Juice ends February 15. You can find out more here.
