Octonauts Live! review: Cadets under 8 will love it

Explore! Rescue! Protect! The family saw Octonauts Live! and it was a visual celebration for the toddler to early elementary set. It was the first stage show for our youngest who is five. He kept stating that we’re going to see an Octonauts movie. I was explaining to him that it’s not a movie and that the Octonauts would be there in person.

Even when I showed him video previews from the show he kept thinking that we’d simply be seeing videos. Our 7 year old understood the mixed media concept of Octonauts Live! a little better. It’s a stage show with actors in Octonaut costumes telling the story of the Midnight Zone and the search for Bob, the blobfish. It incorporates video (but not too much video I expressed to them), rod puppets, body puppets, hand puppets, sound effects and various set changes to take kids under the sea to the Midnight Zone so that they can explore, rescue and protect.

Octonauts Live! is broken up into two 30 minute halves with a 15 minute intermission. The intermission is so that Tweak can fix the Octopod, which broke down and conveniently needs 15 minutes to charge up.

Adults will appreciate the variety of mediums used to tell the story. Our family is big into puppets and sees all of the shows at Center for Puppetry Arts. That was helpful in our children’s understanding of how the various Octonauts or sea creatures could float around the stage.

These were done in very entertaining ways. The Octonauts’ mission would take on more of a macro view when they did this. It would change from human actors who go briefly off stage to enter a vehicle and then the vehicle, with the Octonauts painted in them would reappear on stage. These puppets and placards and were luminescent, which gave them the illusion of moving around the pitch black of the stage on their own.

Towards the end of the show the Ocopod suffered a massive power failure which required all of the cadets in the audience to yell as loudly as possible. Not surprisingly all of the cadets raised the challenge, with each chorus getting louder and more enthusiastic. Due to their hard work all of the cadets (see: children) were formally upgraded to Octonauts, causing much happiness in a certain 5 year old sitting next to me.

Octonauts Live! is broken up into two 30 minutes halves with a 15 minute intermission. The intermission is so that Tweek can fix one of the Octopods that was broken and required her technical insight.

The show has lots of singing, which is interesting because the cartoon itself has very little singing, except for Creature Report. That slight programming shift didn’t bother our 5 year old at all, who went into the bathroom while Tweek was fixing the ship humming one of the songs he’d just heard. Some 7 year old will enjoy Octonauts Live! Ours was lukewarm on it because he’s not that appreciative of singing. Ages younger than that will love the silly songs and quickly rise to the occasion when Captain Barnacles asks them to stand up.