Comments on: Adventure Theatre Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse /2011/09/review-adv-lillys-purple-plastic-purse/ Theater Info for the Washington DC region Mon, 09 Jun 2014 20:41:42 +0000 hourly 1 By: Adele Ballam /2011/09/review-adv-lillys-purple-plastic-purse/comment-page-1/#comment-44292 Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:37:38 +0000 http://www.showbizradio.net/?p=7192#comment-44292 I took my theater-loving daughter to this today, and was highly displeased. The acting, set, and production were very high quality, as I’ve begun to expect from Adventure theater, but the script was very inappropriate for small children. I did appreciate that the issues worked themselves out in the end, but watching bad behavior and hearing bad words always stays with a child. The main character Lily refers to her newborn baby brother as a lump, zero, a nothing, and wants him to disappear and send him to outer space. She says she hates him, and tries to physically harm him. When the baby brother turns into the teacher in a daydream, it is portrayed that he whips or hits students across the back with his baby rattle several times making them repeat letters. Lilly is disguised as a cat at one point, yielding large super soaker water guns so scare the older kids away that are physically pushing the younger characters. Guns, no matter the form, have no place on the stage where small children are invited. The bullies had the overt appearances of piercings and clothing that I wouldn’t want my daughter to assimilate with bad behaved bullies. Lilly exclaims that she never EVER wants to be a teacher when she grows up. Yes, it does resolve in the end, but simply putting those words through a child’s head is sad.
I don’t expect theater to always be 100% ‘clean’, but there were just so many things, over and over again, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who didn’t want my child to hear or see some of what went on.
I’m sure there are other instances I’m forgetting at the moment, but I’m very glad I didn’t bring my friends, and I’ll tell them to not go. I do plan on going to Adventure Theatre again for their other productions and I love the high-quality work, but the story and script chosen this time was unfortunate.

]]> By: Rachel Tellez /2011/09/review-adv-lillys-purple-plastic-purse/comment-page-1/#comment-43477 Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:23:57 +0000 http://www.showbizradio.net/?p=7192#comment-43477 Saw the play last weekend with my 5 year old and was bothered by the inappropriate content for the “all ages rating”. There is a scene where 2 of the mice go out for a lovely bikeride, become frightened after accidentally getting lost, and then get bullied by older scary mice dressed like cats. Lilly then comes out to rescue them, but runs on stage with 2 machine-gun style water guns, and begins shooting at them with motions and noises akin to those seen in battles in films. Yes, they were water guns, but they were not spraying water–the noises and way in which she used them were completely inappropriate for the age group.

The actors were great, though.

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