We went to see Robert Munsch last night in Hamilton. We saw him a year or two ago in Kitchener as well, and we all really enjoyed it, so when we heard he was coming to Hamilton, we grabbed some tickets. Gail is away this weekend so she had to miss it, but I took the boys who are both big Munsch fans. We have a bunch of his books, and the boys regularly bring home others from the school library.
I didn't know until yesterday (before the show) that Munsch had a stroke back in August which left him unable to form sentences. Luckily, he's recovered enough that he is still able to perform, though he did have a couple of pauses during the show where he seemed to forget the next part of the story he was telling. But he's quite animated and a bit eccentric on stage anyway, so if I hasn't known about the stroke beforehand, I don't think I would really have noticed.
According to the article on the stroke, he's touring in support of his latest book "Just One Goal", but he didn't perform that one last night. Munsch frequently invites kids from the audience up onto the stage, but they frequently just sit while he tells the story. During the Paper Bag Princess, one of Gail's favourites and a highlight of the show, he had people from the audience perform it with him — he'd read the lines and had the "characters" repeat them. He had a young girl playing the part of Princess Elizabeth, an even younger boy as Prince Ronald, and a father (he said he needed "an ugly father") playing the dragon. He also performed I Have To Go!, Love You Forever (which I am completely unable to read without choking up), Mortimer (which everyone loves to sing along with), We Share Everything!, Stephanie's Ponytail, Something Good, Thomas' Snowsuit, Up Up Down, and a bunch of others that I hadn't heard before. He talked for about an hour and ten minutes so it wasn't a long show, but you can't expect young kids to sit much longer than that. The tickets were $18, which is quite reasonable in this era of $75-for-the-cheap-seats concert tickets.
If you've never seen Robert Munsch perform live and you have young kids, I recommend taking in a show. By "young kids", I mean pre-teenager. I'm sure there are teens who would enjoy it as well, but it's more aimed at the younger crowd. My boys are 9 and 6 and they both loved it.
And that's the end of that story.
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