Elmo and the gang visited Boston again this year for yet another spectacular show, “When Elmo Grows Up.” The best part is that the music is geared toward adults just as much as the kids, using familiar songs such as “Down on the Corner” and “Give a Little Love” alongside “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Before you know it your smile will be as big as your child’s.

The plot of the show… spoiler alert – skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know about it! Big Bird starts the show by asking the kids in the audience what they want to be when they grow up. He joins the other muppets on Sesame Street in preparing for a big pageant where each one performs a number based on what he/she wants to be. Big Bird doesn’t know what he wants to be, so he ends up helping everyone practice their part of the show. Elmo doesn’t know what he wants to be either, so he joins Big Bird and watches everyone rehearse, only to wind up changing his mind with every performance. Different career choices include a forest ranger, firefighter, train conductor, and police officer, amongst others. The moral of the story: Big Bird learns that he does not need to know right now what he wants to be when he grows up and he can even change his mind several times if he wants to, because that is a part of being a kid.

The show is absolutely adorable and a great lesson for kids of all ages. Plus, if one career isn’t interesting as a storyline to your child, it will change in a few minutes and their attention is grasped again. As usual, Sesame Street keeps the action rolling. They include discussions about letters and numbers and the ever-popular “Elmo’s World” is featured in the second act.

The show started about 15 minutes late (we’re assuming this is to help those parents arriving late, like us!), and ran about an hour and a half. It’s broken up into two acts with a 15 minute intermission. Watch out for the $10 Elmo balloons, which are sold during intermission. Be prepared to tie them to something and keep them low; Big Bird asks that you not block the view of your neighbor. We also saw the rest of the balloons being sold on our way out of the show, though we’re not sure if that happens on a regular basis.

One last piece of advice: if your kid is antsy and you don’t anticipate them sitting through the performance, consider upgrading to floor seats. The children can move about freely and even dance in front of the stage. During several parts of the show some of the monsters actually come down to the floor to dance and visit with the children. The screams of joy are priceless!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 1:13 am and is filed under Events. If you use RSS, you can subscribe to the RSS feed , or if you would rather receive an e-mail, please subscribe to the e-mail in the lower right hand corner of this page. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.