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  ...a joy from start to finish...

  Edinburgh Spotlight
  
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   ...brilliant...

  The Guardian
  
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  ...inspired bedlam...

  The Herald Scotland
  
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   ...brilliantly insane...

  The Scotsman
  

• ...What the Theatre de Complicité did to bring theatre to life in the 1990s, the production may well be doing for the whole family with its theatre of movement, puppetry, strong story-telling and real collaborative heart...

  York Press
  

•  ...a wonderfully, imaginative twist on the classic tale...

  The Worcester Standard
  

• ...Well done to the English Touring Theatre for not insulting anyone's intelligence, giving me a shock, and also reminding me what really good children's theatre should be about... 

  GScene Brighton
  
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   ...a remarkable piece of real theatre. It was dark, funny, sad, scary, engaging and surprising. It is this sort of production that MORE people should see...

  The Public Reviews
  
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   ...a thoroughly entertaining production packed full of comedy for the whole family...

  The Coventry Telegraph
  
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   ...fast-paced action, romance and comedy, there’s enough to keep any family member enthralled from start to finish...

  What's on Stage
  

• Well done all. What a fantastic show. My boys (nearly 12 and 9) were riveted throughout. Sometimes reviewers completely miss the point. This show made two boys – more at home in the ‘shoot & kill’ world of x-box – want to return to the theatre. They told their friends what a great time they had! This production opens the door to a new generation of theatre goers. The actors were brilliant, the comedy and stunts great fun. What a pleasure to sit and watch the on stage action and the faces of my children! Many thanks for cheering up a grey old Saturday. Make more of the puppet images when marketing the show so more families get a chance to step into this marvellous world.

  Elaine aka Ollie and Jasper's mum
  

• This is one of the oddest productions I have ever seen - and I've seen Beckett, Steppenwolf, Ken Campbell and a whole boatload of wacky 'avant garde' stuff. First - the praise. Excellent cast, jolly good fights, agreeable music (though a 'sing-a-long' Musketeers song might have been a better bet.). Terrific sets and costumes; magnificent scary monster and supporting creatures. But...unless I'm much mistaken the first act ends with a (blasphemous? I'm not religious but who knows about other members of the young audience) parody of the Nativity, featuring a set of bloody bagpipes in place of the baby Jesus. And this had been 'untimely ripped' from a musketeer who - in an earlier exchange - had expressed some concern about which bit of his body the 'baby' was going to come out of. I suppose that birth is a mystery and an amusement for many but I'm not sure that 8+ children are ready to grapple with such gynacological problems, especially since the musketter was anxious about bursting open. Children in the audience might find this distressing. The whole baby thing was odd. The baby-eating monster (my nine year old was petrified. Good) seemed to have lurched in from a different play and discovering that the greatest thing in the world was 'Lurve' had me reaching for my sick-bag, partly because it is such a cliche but more because it was at odds with the tone of the whole play. The Queen of Spain gives birth without that much bother and we never do discover how she became pregnant (and by whom) in the first place. It seemed that it was a plot twist that had been stuck in just so that the baby-eating monster could have something to menace. The attitudes to women were strange, too - never mind the sexually aroused nuns (8+? I'm so out of touch.) What was Aramis going to do with the picture of the Virgin Mary? I dread to think. His lounge lizard act was very entertaining but again for the 8+ children just so wrong. The marvellously feisty Constance (Ms Erivo was sinfully underused) turns out to be a bit of a ditherer when it comes to serious matters and, for largely arbitary reasons, lets her boyfriend take the memory wipe and suffer nine years of insanity and ontological insecurity. There was too much plot. The occasionally poetic (or at least, rhyming) parts of the script got buried (I fear that Ms Romilly's accent was too Spanish for some of the audience, i.e. we couldn't make out what she was saying) in the action. I could go on. I'm just not sure who the target audience for this piece was, why the plot was quite so convoluted (There's quite a lot of fun to be had with the Dumas original) and why the tone was so uncertain in places. The play had action, excitement, humour and was well-served by its cast (though I'm a bit sick of camp, kilted musketeers) but...I wasn't bored and nor were my companions. 14 year old girl complained of stereotyping (gay man who wants to be female; 'fiery' Spaniard) but was entertained, 9 year old boy largely enjoyed the play but was puzzled by chunks of it. I'll go and see this company again but have a word with the writer, please. However, I'm singling this bit out as a symptom of the piece as a whole. Yes, kids find farting very funny but the farting discourse went on for far too long and then laboured its point with a consideration of the fragrance of thoughts. Is this from Dumas (I've never read the book) or from Rabelais?

  Nick Cooper
  

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