I thoroughly enjoyed this warm and fun puppetry and story telling show from Oxford kids’ favourite Emma Boor.

Suitcase stories is a delightful monthly event at the Story Museum - each month there’s a new fairytale, told by Emma Boor through music, storytelling and puppetry, all puppets and props pulled out of suitcases arranged around the stage. This month the story was Cinder-rocker: a retelling of Cinderella where she is looking for a gig for her band rather than a husband.

The puppets, made by Boor herself, are absolutely lovely - I especially liked the cast of animals made out of household cleaning supplies (my daughters favourite of these was an extremely pleasing bin badger with dish brush ears). I was also very impressed by a shadow puppet interlude, which provided a lovely change of pace and slice of magic in a high energy show. There was even the opportunity to make your own scouring pad snake at the end (I felt that my daughter was a little young for this, though I saw some snakes being proudly waved around in the cafe afterwards).

Th timing of the show was extremely well managed, with big audience interaction set pieces at regular intervals, like getting dressed up to go for a ball - the kids couldn’t believe they were really allowed to go on stage and raid the massive dressing up boxes! This felt very important with so many toddlers in attendance. The music was also a great way to manage the energy and keep the attention of such young kids over the course of an hour. I enjoyed the selection of 80’s hits, and my daughter enjoyed Emma’s extremely enthusiastic dancing. I enjoyed her performance hugely as well - its impossible not to warm to this incredibly likeable performer with a real affinity for young kids.

While the production was extremely lo-fi (suitcase stories means literally everything comes out of a collection of suitcases) the lighting was great and the woodshed is lovely - a black box studio, but all the walls are covered in doors, bringing real warmth and charm to the space. It was nice to see something simply done but beautifully executed in terms of the production values.

The show is aimed squarely at very young children (my daughter is 2 and could follow everything, and there were certainly 5-year-olds in the audience fully immersed) but there was a lot for the adults as well. A puppet prince made of a vaccuum cleaner gliding around the stage to Lady in Red is funny no matter how old you are. It was clear that there were a lot of families in the audience who attend this show regularly, and with good reason - I’m certainly booking again in the next couple of months.