Jennah Stewart (age 12)
On Saturday, April 9, 2016 I had an amazing evening watching an All The Daze production of Astrid Lindgren’s widely popular children’s novel Pippi Longstocking!
Before the play started I admired the wonderful set. The colours were the first thing to catch my eye. Blue, green, pink and purple decorated Pippi’s house, Villa Villekulla. There were also artsy accents like the wooden benches and the swirl shaped trees. The audience was very excited and so was I, and then the play began!
For those of you who don’t know the story of Pippi Longstocking, it is about a young girl who moves into a very big house all by herself (well, except for her monkey Mr. Nelson, and the horse, of course!) and makes friends with her neighbours Tommy, Annika and Dannika. They have lots of fun together until Tommy, Annika and Dannika have to go to school, something Pippi has never heard of. They explain a few of the subjects and tell Pippi that they get summer and Christmas vacations which Pippi finds unfair—why doesn’t she get any vacation? To solve that problem she decides to start going to school which turns out to not be such a good idea. Pippi can’t spend all day inside with a teacher telling her what to do. So, she decides that school might not be for her.
Meanwhile, the adults of the town are concerned—an orphan girl absolutely cannot be living on her own without discipline or a proper education! But of course Pippi Longstocking is not an orphan. Sure her Mama is an angel up in heaven but her Papa, Captain Longstocking, is only missing, and probably sailing his pirate ship as fast as he can to come find her. While she waits for him to return Pippi has some adventures of her own stopping some burglars and trying out her etiquette skills at Tommy, Annika and Dannika’s mother’s coffee party.
Just as the adults are about to send Pippi to a children’s home, Captain Longstocking returns. Pippi and her father have a happy reunion and he asks her to travel the seas with him and his pirate crew, but she decides that she would rather stay with her new friends. With Pippi allowed to stay in Villa Villekula and her father safe and sound, everyone lives happily ever after.
After the show, I had a chance to talk to a few of the actors and they were the most genuinely fun and silly people. Congratulations to everyone involved in the production especially all the actors and a big thanks to Marcia Arpin who directed this production. Congratulations on all of your hard work, the play really was a lot of fun to watch!