Past Productions

The Magic Hat

July/August 2004

Following the huge success of last year's 'A Fairy's Tale' and Christmas extravaganza 'The Star Catcher' Cahoots NI is delighted to present its brand new production for young children.

'The Magic Hat' is bigger and bolder than its predecessors, and promises children's theatre at its best.

The show will amaze young audiences with its fabulous drama, brilliant live music, breathtaking magic, cool circus skills and fantastic illusions.As the performance is non verbal it is particulary suitable for children with hearing difficulties.


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May/June/July 2004

Seoul Performing Arts Festival for Young Audiences

The Company will soon be leaving Belfast to perform at the Seoul Performing Arts Festival for Young Audiences, running from 17th - 27th July 2004. There will be 17 plays performed in all - Cahoots NI being one of 4 from Europe. They will be bringing their new production, THE MAGIC HAT, a show that is bigger and bolder than previous Cahoots NI productions and which promises children's theatre at its best.

Organisers, the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ASSITEJ), was established in 1965 to enrich the lives of children and young people. It unites individuals, professional theatres and theatre organisations in order to raise the artistic standards of theatre for children and young people. It recognizes the potential of children and their capacity to contribute in the future to the development of society. They commented that since 1995, when they began inviting outstanding foreign theatre productions for children, the number of theatre companies specializing in children's theatre has increased, and more professional actors and directors want to specialize in children's plays. It has tremendously invigorated and challenged theatre for children.

The invitation will place Cahoots NI at the forefront of an international network that links thousands of theatre companies and individuals across nearly 70 countries. From Korea, Japan, China, from Australia to France, from Russia to India, the Americas and the Middle East.

Sunday Life – June 6, 2004

Clowning Around Is Magical!

Should Cahoots NI be in your vicinity in the next few weeks, be sure to try to catch its new show The Magic Hat.

Mind you, Albert, Victoria, Molly, and the three cartoon clowns are slippery characters. If you don’t watch out they’ll disappear you, or even try to cut off your head.
Such is the fate awaiting Albert, the naughty boy, who is the central character of Paul Bosco McEneaney’s wonderful little show. Albert persuades his good-as-gold sister, Victoria, to try on a hat marked ‘Don’t Dare Wear’. She obliges, and is promptly whisked away to a faraway land.

The hat makes its way into the hands of wannabe magician, Molly Middleton, before ending up on Albert’s tousled head, at which point McEneaney really cranks up the magic and the illusions.
It’s a worn out cliché, but there really and truly is something for all ages here. Kids will be completely entranced by Albert’s cautionary tale, and bamboozled by some quite amazing magic feats of pure magic. In turn, adults will crane their necks in vain to try to spot how it’s all doe, and will revel in the irony of Paul Boyd’s narration.

Boyd also ads a strong original score, which he, Georgia Simpson and KelseyLong, play live on stage. Designer, Lucille S Acevedo-Jones, creates a fantastical otherworld, through which the performers – Diane Kennedy, Hugh Brown, Paul Quate, and the simply amazing Seamus Allen – dance, mime, juggle, unicycle, conjure, joke and tumble their merry path.
But the climax of the show is Long’s mesmerizing routine on the scarlet aerial silk, which lifts its audiences up and away into a place full of wonder and beauty.

Cahoots NI directors, Zoe Seaton and McEneaney, have taken the company off on an exciting new journey of imagination. In July they have been invted to take the show to the Asian Theatre Festival for Young Audiences in Seoul, South Korea, where it is certain to knock’em dead.

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The Irish Times - Tuesday, June 1 2004

There can be few more enlivening ways of passing an hour on a dull, damp morning in Belfast - or any time of day, anywhere - than in the madcap presence of Cahoots NI's new show.

This is easily its most ambitious and complete undertaking so far, encompassing just about all of its huge lexicon of performance skills: mime, live music, magic, illusion, circus skills, storytelling and pure, unadulterated entertainment.

Directors Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney and Zoe Seaton have set the compnay along an exciting path of exploration, offering all kinds of tantalising possibilities for the future. In unfolding the cautionary tale of naughty Albert, who sends his dear little sister Victoria to Never Never Land by persudaing her to try on a hat marked "Don't Dare Wear", they have embarked on a style that combines European expressionism with scaled-down Cirque du Soliel spectacle.
Add to that Paul Boyd's droll narration and plinky score, played live by Boyd, Georgia Simpson and Kelsey Long, and the result is a show with enough wonder and suspense to keep young imaginations on tenterhooks and older, world-weary customers laughing their legs off.

At the centre of it all is shock-headed Seamus Allen as Albert, his supreme physical performance here reaching new levels of engagement. Hugh Brown, Diane Kennedy and Paul Quate are a beguiling trio of black-and-white cartoony clowns, who plot the most dastardly and grotesque methods imainable for removing the offending hat from the head of the mischevious Albert. Georgia Simpson is a plumply glinting Molly Middleton, the wannabe magician. And when Kelsey Long puts down her fiddle and launches into Victoria's visionary return to this world her graceful. fluid gymnastics on a scarlet aerial silk transport us in to another universe, full of wonder, beauy and new horizons.

This show will surely knock the socks off audiences when it travels to the Asian Theatre Festival for Young Audiences in Seoul next month.

Jane Coyle