Rating: ★★★★
Venue: Little Angel Studios, London
Join super sleuth Danyah Miller to unravel ‘The Mystery of Little Angel Theatre’. From the award-winning creators of ‘I Believe in Unicorns’ comes this new brain-teasing interactive adventure. Combining live board game elements with a thrilling evidence hunt, you’ll become a detective faced with intriguing suspects, curious objects and a detailed theatre map. Can we crack this case together? Navigate through secrets and surprises, watch camera footage and uncover hidden clues, every riddle bringing us closer to the truth. Expect mischief, intrigue, spontaneous stories and of course a sprinkle of magic. Get involved... get it solved!
This show is a Cluedo style murder mystery board game inside a show. Danyah Miller takes on the role of Detective Newbie, tasked with training a group of new recruits (the audience) by guiding them through the case of a murder that's just been discovered at the Little Angel Theatre. The set was fun and cleverly dressed, with the props extremely intricately designed by Kate Bunce, the game board itself took my breath away with its versatility and elaborate detail.
Rather than explaining the rules, Miller discovers them alongside us, ensuring the audience is brought along and included in every step of the journey. I was surrounded by excited chatter and gasps of surprise as the children got to experience discovering clues and information for themselves and feeling like they were all genuinely a part of solving this mystery.
The show is advertised as being ‘for everyone over 6’, and although all the children there were pretty well engrossed, it definitely seemed to hit best with the slightly older children and I think 8-10 would be the perfect sweet spot, as some of the younger ones hadn’t quite developed the moral reasoning skills to follow the concept entirely. Most importantly though, the show had something for everyone, with nobody left out. The show used proper industry terminology and managed to perfectly hit the mark between the show being accessible to children, but not simplified down to exclude any older detectives in the room! There were some more adult-focused jokes thrown in to keep parents entertained and exceedingly clever intricate plot details for sharper minds to notice and appreciate.
It’s clear that every single element of this show was created with the key focus on what the audience would get out of the experience. While there was a fair amount of audience participation, I felt that there was still some space for that to be used and included even more so.
The game was structured in three rounds, and while the first two worked extremely well, I felt by the time we reached the third things were a little rushed and became harder for small minds to follow. There were also so many clever details that were skipped over which feels like a shame given how intelligently written the whole thing is.
Overall I had a really fun morning as a detective at Little Angel Theatre and definitely recommend this show as a true family experience, brilliant for adults and children alike and everybody in between.
You can book tickets to The Mystery of Little Angel Theatre at Little Angel Studios, here.
Review by Rachel
**photo credit: Ellie Kurttz**
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