Winnie The Pooh Musical is the Australian production of the musical Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Adaptation created by Jonathan Rockefeller and Rockefeller Productions in collaberation with australlian childrens touring company Life Like Touring.
Information About The Show[]
As Winnie the Pooh says: “Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”[]
And the honeypot-loving yellow bear has certainly taken a big chunk out of ours for almost a century – ever since A.A. Milne, inspired by a Canadian black bear called Winnie at the London Zoo, created the stories for his son, Christopher Robin.
More than 50 million books have sold worldwide, with film and TV adaptations popping up in different eras after Disney bought the rights in 1961. Now Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga and Roo – and, of course, Christopher Robin – have their own musical.
On the back of acclaimed reviews in New York, London and Chicago, Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Stage Adaptation is touring Australia, opening in WA this week.
American-Australian creator Jonathan Rockefeller agrees Milne’s beloved stories aren’t an obvious choice for a musical at first glance because they are so intimate.
“If you read the books, most of the stories are small vignettes that often only feature two or three characters. Most of the characters (excluding Owl and Rabbit) are also toys – which may be the real reason why they haven’t really been adapted for the stage in their 95-plus year history,” he says.
“The answer to us was clear: the creation of large-scale puppets with the ability to fully animate them on stage, afforded us the opportunity to tell the type of story we wanted, while remaining true to the books and movies.”
Rockefeller has a strong history of bringing children’s stories to the stage, though it wasn’t the career path he necessarily envisaged.
“I trained initially in film and television before starting as Baz Luhrmann’s assistant at the age of 19,” he says. “Then I worked as a creative director in advertising, but I was also directing commercials and music videos clips (when Rage and Video Hits was still a thing).”
Rockefeller Studios first theatrical show, The Very Hungry Caterpillar – a large-scale puppetry show focused on audiences under five – became an Off-Broadway hit almost a decade ago .”It changed the company’s trajectory and theatre shows became a solid part of my creative output,” he says.
We asked Rockefeller to take us into the Hundred Acre Wood and behind the scenes of his musical creation.
Julie Hosking: What are the challenges of bringing such iconic characters to the stage?
Jonathan Rockefeller: It’s a satisfying challenge. Each character has such a rich history – not just A.A. Milne’s original text, but also the Disney movies and cartoon series. Everyone already walks into the theatre with their own preconceived expectations. With so many tales, songs and beloved quotes to choose from, the challenge was deciding which familiar moments to adapt, while also creating something new. It was a delicate balancing act.
JH: How do you cast for roles where personality is conveyed through puppetry?
JR: Part of the magic behind our show is that we never hide the puppeteers. Their performance is as equally important as the puppets, and each puppeteer brings their own individuality to the characters. It’s fascinating seeing how characters we all know so well can feel so fresh in the hands of our cast. Tigger is an especially fun one – we’ve had over a dozen puppeteers play him across the globe, and each one, including Jake Waterworth who plays the role in Australia, brings their own magnetic energy to our bouncy, trouncy friend.
JH: Tell us about the genesis of the songs in the musical – are there ones the Sherman Brothers wrote for the early movies or some new ones, too?
JR: Music has always been such an integral part of all that goes into the Hundred Acre Wood – especially since so many of us already know the tunes. With Winnie the Pooh, there is so much music from all the movies and series, it is impossible to get every great song into one show!
The show features your favourite Sherman Brothers songs (The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers, the Winnie the Pooh theme song and many more), as well as two original A.A. Milne works that appear in the original books. In the books they appear as poems or ‘hums’ that Pooh writes for himself, and I think it’s a great nod to the author’s text to be able to include them.
Clever listeners will also hear little Easter eggs in the music, including the 1980s’ opening cartoon theme orchestrally in the background – and all of us who grew up on that cartoon know what a catchy tune that is!
While it was important to include so much of the Winnie the Pooh historical songs, like the script, it was also important for us to introduce something brand new, creating a thoughtful blend of nostalgia and bespoke. The show also features new music by award-winning Australian composer Nate Edmondson.
JH: You have also adapted other children’s classics, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Paddington Bear – what draws you to these stories?
JR: It’s a thrilling challenge to bring iconic and beloved characters ‘to life’ – especially characters so widely known and beloved as Pooh. Audiences feel deeply for all these characters. They’ve often been a big part of their early development, and those of their loved ones. For adults to revisit their childhood and share those memories with others is a powerful thing, and is also something that motivates myself and the entire Rockefeller Studios team. Our goal is to foster a life-long love for the theatre and an appreciation of the arts.
JH: What do you think is behind the enduring love for AA Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood?
JR: The Hundred Acre Wood holds something for everybody. Everyone sees parts of themselves in Pooh, Tigger, Kanga, Rabbit, Eeyore and the gang. But it’s the sense of community and the notion that friendship is about helping others, even if you don’t completely understand them – a life lesson for us all. Their stories go to show that even on your blustery days, there will always be someone or something to lend a smackerel of honey.
JH: Would adults enjoy the musical as much as the kids?
JR: We designed Disney’s Winnie the Pooh to delight audiences both young and young at heart. Fans have the chance to spend time with the characters from their childhood while also watching world-class puppeteers bring these innovative, wonderfully inventive puppets to life. There is a myriad of ways that audiences will experience the show while sitting in the audience, and we’re thrilled to share all the smiles, laughs, and singalongs our production inspires.
JH: Do you a favourite character in Winnie the Pooh?
JR: I love Tigger the best. He’s so optimistic and it’s his enthusiasm that is always getting him into trouble. [1]
While Disney’s Winnie the Pooh — The New Musical Stage Adaptation creator Jonathan Rockefeller may not have initially come from a puppetry background, he considers his passion for the art form to have been percolating away during his formative years.
After all, he grew up in the hills north of Sydney watching a wealth of homegrown puppetry on TV, from Mr Squiggle, Agro, Ossie Ostrich, The Ferals, Lift Off and the 1980s puppet series Blinky Bill, not to mention Sesame Street.
Although it was not until seeing Julie Taymor’s visionary large-scale puppetry on Broadway musical The Lion King that Rockefeller began to think about creating his own movement piece with puppetry, on a slightly smaller scale, inspired by a very famous picture book.
“Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar was a production that broke a lot of new ground, particularly in its scale for its age demographic,” Rockefeller, who now lives in New York, says.
“In the history of Off-Broadway, there had never been a show for children so young, and people started to sit up and pay attention.”
It led to experimenting with productions Paddington Gets in a Jam and Sesame Street the Musical — both hiding its puppeteers to suspend belief these characters are real — before another childhood favourite proved inspirational and premiered at Theatre Row in New York in 2021, created by Rockefeller Productions alongside Disney Theatrical Productions.
“Winnie the Pooh was on Saturday Disney every Saturday morning growing up, so my memories are sugary cereal with cold milk watching it with my brothers,” Rockefeller shares.
“My older brother and I teased our younger brother by calling him Eeyore every time he complained, which is a nickname that lasts to this day.
“Surprisingly, despite being over 95 years old and Disney’s Winnie the Pooh being over 55 years old, Winnie the Pooh has never been brought to the stage before, except in the form of suited characters or humans playing the roles. So we saw this as a tremendous opportunity to take a very recognizable and well-loved set of characters and bring them to the stage in this way for the first time.”
Disney’s Winnie the Pooh — The New Musical State Adaptation brings A.A. Milne’s loveable characters to life as though they are real, Rockefeller referring to it as “animation for the stage” where characters move and talk so convincingly that audiences completely ignore the puppeteers and focus on the characters and puppets themselves.
“Once we were confident that the puppets could operate and move like the characters, knowing their limitations and skills (Tigger can jump as high as a human can), then we were able to craft the script and set around the characters,” he explains.
“It came down to revisiting every Pooh story imaginable, and every song that had ever been written by the Sherman Brothers, while also considering new elements to incorporate in our show. There is 95 plus years of history to consider.
“It’s a new Hundred Acre Wood tale never told before, but it incorporates everything you know and love about these characters and this music at the same time, creating a beautiful balance of old and new.
“There are so many songs and stories to draw upon, so choosing which iconic moments to adapt while also creating something fresh that long-time fans have never seen before was a delicate balancing act. Pooh was always going to have to get stuck in something, something was always going to happen to Eeyore’s house, Piglet is going to get scared and Tigger is going to destroy Rabbit’s garden. There are vignettes that are unmistakably part of A.A. Milne’s world.”
Rockefeller has also been careful to retain the essence of these Winnie the Pooh stories, likeable for their meandering tales that reflect how children think and play, where they set out to do one thing, get distracted, come up with a better idea and the story turns into something else.
“I feel we’ve crafted an experience that’s equally faithful to the characters we know and love while creating a brand-new adventure for fans of all ages.”[2]
Disney has a magical way of transporting an audience to another place. We’ve seen it in the stage adaptations of Aladdin, Frozen and Mary Poppins, and now Disney’s Winnie The Pooh is in town for a very limited season.
Audiences are taken through the four seasons in The Hundred Acre Wood as Pooh and his friends go on a series of adventures. The script weaves together several of the most famous moments from the original books and the Disney animations, including elements from The Blustery Day, Pooh searching for Honey and getting stuck in a tree, Tigger destroying Rabbit’s garden, and the search for Eeyore’s house. Although the story manages to fit a lot of content into an hour, not once is the dialogue rushed. It is well paced and clear. There are so many levels to the stories — there are great messages for kids, and nostalgia in bucket loads for the bigger ‘kids’ who grew up with Winnie The Pooh.
What makes this production extra special is how it makes theatre accessible for all ages. There are no sudden loud noises, the audio balance is perfect — it is a carefully, well considered piece of theatre.
The stars of the show, Winnie, Tigger, Piglet, Kanga, Roo, Owl, Rabbit and Eeyore are beautiful puppets, operated and voiced by a team of incredible actors. Alex Joy carries the weight of the show as Winnie The Pooh. Joy’s puppetry work is stunning as he becomes one with Pooh. He has done a remarkable job at capturing Pooh’s iconic mannerisms. Rebekah Head operates Piglet and Roo, bringing her own wonderful interpretation to these adorable roles. The bouncing and lively Tigger (T I double Guh Rrrrrr) is enthusiastically operated by Jake Waterworth. Andrew McDougall operated Eeyore, Owl and Rabbit, showcasing his skills as an operator and voice artist. Kanga and a variety of other puppets (and Owl’s wings) are magically brought to life by Jemma Armstrong. Rounding out the cast is Jess Ridler who brings the show together as Christopher Robin.
The puppets, all made by Rockefeller Studios, are magical. Their skilled operators make you forget they are puppets — they become one, showing the puppets emotions or thoughts on their own faces, but never drawing attention away from what the puppet is doing.
The show is enhanced by the wonderful score that features original songs by The Sherman Brothers, stunningly arranged by Nate Edmondson. The animation-like set, designed by Rockefeller Studios, helps transport the audience into the magical world of Winnie The Pooh. The actors are costumed in blue ombres, which seem to make them blend into the sky, but also, as Christopher Robin is also in blue, highlights that the characters are all part of his imagination.
As Pooh always says, “Get your family together and take a heart-warming visit to the Dunstan Playhouse and the magical Hundred Acre Wood” (well, maybe that’s not quite a direct quote…). This is a show for the young and young at heart. It will leave you feeling warm and full of joy.[3]
Brisbane Powerhouse saw the premiere of a new stage version of the classic tales by AA Milne, as elevated to iconic children’s favourite status by Walt Disney. This delightful adaptation featuring puppetry, colour and music is a good entry-level musical for very young kids to get them into the theatre. All their favourite characters are here – and most received audible ‘ooohs and aaaahs’ from the children in the audience as they made their entrances. There’s Winnie the Pooh, the loveable bear at the heart of the tales, his best friend, Piglet, and their friends from the Hundred Acre Woods, Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit, Tigger, Kanga and Roo. Taking a small smattering of Pooh’s adventures, this production condenses them into a short show that plays with puppetry, voices, humour and simple stage effects that the whole family can enjoy.
There is some terrific work by the human cast of upcoming Aussie and Kiwi actors who perform live while manipulating their almost-life-size character puppets, Bunraku style, where the puppeteer is seen on stage. Alex Joy is wonderful as Pooh Bear, with a rich Sterling Holloway style vocal range for everyone’s favourite bear. Jake Waterworth was a powerfully positive stage presence as the energetic Tigger. New Zealander Rebekah Head was delightful as Piglet and Roo, and Andrew McDougall was endearing as Eeyore, Rabbit and Owl. There was also Jess Ridler as Christopher Robin and Jemma Armstrong as Kanga, with Jacqui Dwyer and Matthew Whitty as a range of butterflies, bees and other woodland creatures. It’s hard work being a puppeteer and the cast maintained high energy throughout the show.
Deceptively simple, the show also features musical direction and sound design by Nate Edmondson, lighting by Gints Karklins, audio by Ash Armitt, wardrobe by Freya Allen, mechanics by Nicholas Ralph and puppet wrangling by Jackson Eather. The Australian production is brought to life and co-produced by Melbourne-based theatrical producers TEG Life Like Touring, and the show’s original creators and puppet builders, Rockefeller Productions. An award-winning group based in New York, Rockefeller Productions is also responsible for creating Sesame Street The Musical, Paddington Gets In a Jam, The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, and The Golden Girls Show! A Puppet Parody. The group is dedicated to high-quality family entertainment, and is led by American-Australian producer, Jonathan Rockefeller, who specialises in partnering with animation giants such as Disney, Pixar, Sesame Street and Peanuts to create life-size puppet characters. The focus on puppetry really suits the cast of the Hundred Acre Wood because children will naturally extend their play by voicing their stuffed toy characters and bringing the story to life again at home.
Honouring author AA Milne, this production takes on his original tone of simple stories written with warmth and comedy to appeal to very young readers. It also features some original songs written by the Sherman brothers for the original Disney productions. For the visual designs and puppets, Rockefeller Productions have chosen a happy medium between the day glo colours of the Disney animation and the pale lines of EH Shepard’s illustrations to create a pastel stage palette. This was a little bit too calm for some young viewers whose attention span really begins to wane after half an hour. But, that’s just fine, as Rockefeller told NPR’s Elizabeth Blair: “We don't have a shushing policy because they're viscerally responding to what's in front of them, and to see them excited is important.” Well, the packed audience of all ages – some wearing their Disney costumes – certainly enjoyed the show’s themes of friendship and kindness and fun. And because of the ‘no shushing’ philosophy, some pieces – especially Tigger’s song – were crying out for a bit of audience participation and, for me, the show could have used more songs, but I am hardly the target demographic!
Following the premiere in Brisbane, Winnie and his woodland pals take to the road in an Aussie tour starting with the Opera House in Sydney, then to Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria and regional New South Wales.[4]
Australian Tour Dates[5][]
- Dandenong, Drum Theatre: 7 July 2023
- Brisbane, Brisbane Powerhouse: 12 – 16 July 2023
- Sydney, Sydney Opera House: 20 – 23 July 2023
- Launceston, Princess Theatre: 26 – 27 July 2023
- Hobart, Theatre Royal: 4- 6 August 2023
- Noarlunga, Hopgood Theatre: 9 – 10 August 2023
- Adelaide, Adelaide Festival Centre: 16 – 20 August 2023
- Mandurah, Mandurah Performing Arts Centre: 23 – 24 August 2023
- Bunbury, Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre: 25 – 26 August 2023
- Perth, Regal Theatre: 29 August – 3 September 2023
- Canberra, Canberra Theatre: 7 – 9 September 2023
- Parramatta, Riverside Theatre: 14 – 17 September 2023
- Melbourne, Comedy Theatre: 21 – 24 September 2023
- Geelong, Geelong Arts Centre: 27 – 28 September 2023
- Albury, Albury Entertainment Centre: 30 September – 1 October 2023
Cast[]
- Alex Joy as Winnie The Pooh
- Jake Waterworth as Tigger
- Rebekah Head as Piglet/Roo
- Andrew McDougall as Eeyore/Rabbit/Owl
- Jemma Armstrong as Kanga
- Matthew Whitty (Eeyore/Rabbit/Owl, Tigger, and Pooh understudy)
- Jacqui Dwyer (Piglet Roo and Kanga understudy)
Trivia[]
- Sebastiano Ricci who was the understudy/swing in for the original production, Chicago production, and encore production, from 2021 and 2022 but in this production he serve's as the associate director for the first half of the tour.[6]
Gallery[]
Videos[]
External Links[]
https://glamadelaide.com.au/theatre-review-disneys-winnie-the-pooh/
http://www.gerimaree.com/2023/09/the-winnie-pooh-musical-riverside.html
https://www.livingartscanberra.com.au/disneys-winnie-the-pooh-the-new-musical-stage-adaptation/
https://xpressmag.com.au/the-new-musical-stage-adaptation-of-winnie-the-pooh-arrives-in-wa/
https://secretperth.com/disneys-winnie-the-pooh-new-musical-stage-adaptation/
References[]
- ↑ https://www.seesawmag.com.au/2023/08/far-from-your-average-bear
- ↑ https://thewest.com.au/entertainment/theatre/disneys-winnie-the-pooh-the-new-musical-stage-adaptation-brings-hundred-acre-woods-to-wa-c-11524278
- ↑ https://glamadelaide.com.au/theatre-review-disneys-winnie-the-pooh/
- ↑ https://www.stagewhispers.com.au/reviews/disney%E2%80%99s-winnie-pooh-new-musical-stage-adaptation
- ↑ https://secretperth.com/disneys-winnie-the-pooh-new-musical-stage-adaptation/
- ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/CuEmTNvxJ1A/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==