Theatre with kids: Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World – review

From Amelia Earhart and Rosa Parks, to Frida Kahlo and superspy Agent Fifi, women have changed the world. Fantastically Geeat Women Who Changed the World by Kate Pankhurst – a distant relative of suffragette Emmeline – is an engaging accessible way for children to learn about some of these amazing achievers.

The book has lively illustrations and tells the women’s stories in ways that my six year old can understand, enjoy and even relate to.

It’s now been turned into a stage show which is brilliant fun. We went to see it at London’s The Other Palace theatre in September – it has just ended its run, and I know it has already toured some other cities – but if it comes to a theatre near you, I highly recommend it.

The story is told through the eyes of Jade, a school girl who gets left behind in a museum on a school trip. That’s the story of her life – being forgotten and overlooked. But with the help of some fantastic women from history, Jade comes to see that she has enormous potential to be truly great- even if she doesn’t quite know in what way yet.

It’s a musical featuring only five performers, who switch between a variety of roles, with some great songs that got my daughter clapping along and singing long after we’d gotten home (Emmeline Pankhurt’s ‘Deeds not words’ was a particular favourite of hers and also mine).

The costumes are lovely and the way the women were brought to life was very inventive – I’m not entirely sure if my daughter still thinks that Marie Curie was a superhero but in a way she was! She had a lot of questions about some of the people she hadn’t heard of before (Anne Frank appears briefly, and the other characters mention that her father was the only member of her family to survive the war – my daughter wanted to know more about him for example). She was thrilled to see some of the women she did know about portrayed on stage – having previously dressed up as Mary Anning for an event at school for example) and really enjoyed the show.

There is now a series of books as well as the original, including Fantastically Great Women in history and who saved the planet – but if you do get a chance to see the show then you won’t regret it.