A Visit to "Dear Edwina"

A lot of NYC bloggers like myself are lucky to get invited to kids' events around the city. Unfortunately, life can get complicated for my kids and me for many reasons I can't elaborate on here, so we frequently have to turn these invitations down. But one weekday afternoon recently, the stars aligned and I got a chance to take four-year-old R. (accompanied by his wonderful special ed teacher, Lauren) to a performance of "Dear Edwina", a kid-friendly musical I had heard wonderful things about. Written by the same song-writing team behind Junie B. Jones, "Dear Edwina" is a show about Edwina Spoonapple, a girl who loves to give advice a la Dear Abby. It's told through a show-within-a-show format and includes plenty of catchy songs, slapstick humor, and gentle teachable moments about everything from trying new foods to making new friends.

S. doesn't often sit through entire performances (even kid-friendly one-hour shows), so Lauren and I weren't sure how he'd do. But it helped that the theater was small and not too overwhelming, we had good seats, and the sets and characters definitely appealed to him (each time a character exited stage left or stage right, S. was very concerned, asking, "Where'd he go? When he comes back???") He laughed at the physical humor, hummed along with the songs, and clapped along with everyone else. He didn't ask to leave once, and nodded his head "yes" vigorously when asked if he'd had a good time afterwards. All in all, a success!

Given our experience, I'd say that the show is appropriate for ages 3 and up....way up (I thoroughly enjoyed it too). It is playing at the DR2 Theater (103 East 15th Street, NYC) through Friday, February 25, 2011. Visit the Dear Edwina website for more info. and tickets.

"Dear Edwina" provided us free tickets to see the show; I was not compensated in any other way for this review and the opinions expressed here are solely my own.