Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Adaptation crafts a theatrical experience for the whole family with a story sure to delight through the use of puppetry and beloved songs.
As a lifelong Winnie the Pooh fan myself, I thought this show looked absolutely adorable from the moment I saw the first look. It has had two successful engagements both in New York and Chicago, and I was happy to catch it on its second engagement in New York this summer.
This new stage musical draws on elements of many of the beloved stories from the Winnie the Pooh franchise, including nods to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Tigger Movie, and Piglet’s Big Movie. The narrative of the the show follows Pooh and his friends after Christopher Robin goes to school one day. The story turns through the different seasons, using sensory details to engage the audience as the characters interact with the different seasons on stage. There are many classic Winnie the Pooh touches, from Pooh’s hunt for honey, to Rabbit protecting his garden, to Tigger looking for a new way to bounce. The full cast includes all of the characters used in Disney’s adaptations of the franchise, including Christopher Robin, Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, Owl, and Rabbit.
The show features many old favorite songs from the Winnie the Pooh franchise, including ‘Winnie the Pooh’, ‘The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers’ and ‘A Rather Blustery Day’ written by Robert and Richard Sherman.
For the average adult theatre-goer, Winnie the Pooh is a little bit of a different experience to most. Of course, the show’s target audience is families and children, and the performance has been adapted to be more mindful and friendly to this audience. The show is kept to a tight 50 minutes with no intermission, and the show is very visually engaging with short songs that will keep little ones engaged.
I really loved the use of puppetry in this production. The puppets are crafted smartly and the combination of puppet design and costume design keeps the viewer in the story. I feel like puppets can be a little bit hit and miss for me in my personal taste, but I really liked the use of puppetry in this instance and I think it works really well for this show.
As an adult going to the show for my own interest and enjoyment, I found it to be a pretty smooth experience overall. The nature of the show makes it feel a little bit more like the type of show you might see at an amusement park than a full-scale Broadway production. It reminds me of the type of show we might see in Disneyland or at Disney California Adventure.
This was a really cute and fun production and would be a wonderful way to introduce children to theatre. I’m glad I had a chance to catch it in New York, since there is no plan for it to tour near me locally.
Winnie the Pooh had an engagement off-Broadway at Theatre Row in NYC in the fall and winter of 2021, a limited engagement in Chicago at the Mercury Theatre in the spring of 2022, a second engagement at Theatre Row in the summer of 2022, and will embark on a US National Tour in the fall of 2022 into spring 2023.
The Broadway Edit 