Sheffield theatre hosts fun family show The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a retelling of the ancient Aesop’s fable, set in a snowy village among a family of shepherds.

The show is on at The Montgomery in Surrey Street, Sheffield on November 30.

Actor-musicians Florence Russell, Alex Wingfield and Guido Garcia Lueches play the endearing characters, the hilarious sheep and perhaps a scary wolf or two.

Wendy Harris is artistic director of theatre company tutti frutti, who are famed for creating children’s shows.

She said the show has been seen before in a slightly different form.

“We’ve refreshed it completely. It’s the same story but has a slightly different look and feel to it.

“One of the things that people are liking is the sheep. They are very funny.

“We’ve got an ensemble of three actors and the story revolves around a boy, mum and granddad, who are shepherds who live in a village.

“They are obsessed with knitting and it’s three knitters who tell the story. They are three of the villagers and very comical as well.

“It’s a story of this boy who doesn’t want to be a shepherd – he dreams of being an astronaut or a story-teller.

“His granddad can’t go up on the mountains any more, so he says to the boy, Sirius, it’s up to you.”

Sirius’s mum, meanwhile, is the best knitter in the village but she never wins the winter jumper knitting competition, so part of the story revolves around whether she will succeed at last.

Wendy said that while Sirius is up the mountain with the sheep, he can hear the villagers below having a great time celebrating the winter jumper competition, so he claims he can see wolves and raises the alarm.

The third time he does, the wolf actually arrives, but nobody believes him, so it’s up to Sirius to face danger on his own.

Wendy said: “He grows up during the course of the story. He’s a young boy who doesn’t want to take responsibility, and then he does take his responsibility seriously. He grows up because of that.”

The show, which features original music by Dominic Sales, is careful to make sure that the wolves are not too scary, said Wendy.

She said: “Just to reassure people, we took a very definite decision not to costume the wolves in any way.

“The children love the scariness of the wolves but they are not terrified.

“The idea of them is just dropped into the story every now and then. We try to put the wolf into the imagination of the children.”

So the idea is that children conjure up the wolf in their imaginations, rather than actually seeing someone in a scary costume.

Wendy said that children often leave the theatre either baa-ing like the sheep or howling like the wolves, depending on which of the characters they like best.

The show, which is aimed at children aged three and over, works really well with families with older and younger children, said Wendy.

“If you are going as a family, the older children will really enjoy the story and relate to Sirius.

“The younger children enjoy the voices and music and the funny sheep.”

Box office: themontgomery.org.uk