Review: Rainforest Adventures

Sloths, Snakes and Silliness, Rainforest Style

Does your Pre-K kid love to dig up bugs? Or maybe your elementary-aged child is enthralled by nature shows on TV? Then add Rainforest Adventures to your calendar.
Take your seat in the dark theater at the Center for Puppetry Arts, and the enchantment begins even before the show starts with glowing, lush scenery and mysterious chirpy sounds. All around, young animal-lovers try to imitate the noises and guess what creatures they are hearing.
This show is like seeing a rainforest documentary – with puppets! While there isn’t any dialogue, the acrobatic antics of the anteater and the peppy song of the cock-of-the-rock (a bird!) give young audience members many reasons to giggle and gasp. Then the gentle three-toed sloth and her baby make everyone feel warm and cuddly.
But the howler monkey, and believe it or not, a plant – a cannonball fruit to be exact – steal the show. This goofy primate reappears throughout, swinging in the trees while making new friends.
My 5-year-old son had a hard time choosing his favorite character. He first said the pink dolphin, and then changed his mind to the howler monkey. “I liked it when the monkey was smelling the stinky flower,” he told me. Then he decided that the caiman and the anaconda were best, “because they had a funny fight in the water.”
The show also has toucans and tapirs, piranhas and iguanas, butterflies and bats. See how a caterpillar changes and how leaf-cutter ants do their work. A multitude of styles of puppetry blend together magically. The talented cast emerges at the end of the show to demonstrate some of the ways they bring the puppets to life. And make a day of your trip by crafting an electric eel puppet.
This beastly performance is an adventure not-to-be missed!       

– Sherry V. Crawley

If You Go

Rainforest Adventures
Center for Puppetry Arts, 1404 Spring St. NW, Atlanta; 404-873-3391; puppet.org
When: Through March 15; show times vary daily.
Cost: $16.50 ages 2 and older; tickets include museum admission as well as the Create-A-Puppet Workshop (or To-Go Kit), where kids can make an electric eel puppet and watch it glow under a black light.