The Sooty Show review – enduring puppet still in key with Year One humour

Being a connoisseur of the iPlayer, my four-year-old hadn’t even heard of Sooty and Sweep, let alone know that The Sooty Show has (like all fondly remembered 70s kids TV) been rebooted and refreshed since Matthew “Son of Harry” Corbett packed it in 1998. It turns out that Sooty is alive and well on ITV, presented by Richard Cadell, the fresh-faced ringmaster who actually owns the entire Sooty empire after he personally bought the rights in 2008.

Cadell also works the stage for the Sooty live show, which is currently wheeling around the country on a mammoth tour. Having lugged the initially nonplussed four-year-old along, I can report that, while The Sooty Show is no great shakes purely as theatre – unlike, say, the beautifully crafted Charlie and Lola show we saw up the road at the Playhouse, or the ideas-stuffed Wind in the Willows at the North Wall – it is so perfectly calibrated for the reception and year one primary-schooler, it’s almost scary. My daughter, like every kid in the theatre, spent the entire show either in continuous hysterics, yelling like a banshee, or capering to a level that endangered the integrity of the theatre seat.

So what triggered all this? Nothing apparently spectacular: it’s Sooty’s birthday, Sweep and Soo are on hand to help make a cake, and get the place ready. Butch the post-dog and Ramsbottom the Yorkshire-accented snake shove their head through the letterbox from time to time, and Cadell himself expresses the fear that his boss Mr Slater might turn up and sack him from his not-altogether-clear profession. The light show is distinctly 70s disco, Cadell wears the same holiday camp jacket from the TV show, and three small puppets aren’t a promising fit for a giant proscenium.

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But from the moment he bursts on stage, Cadell shows that the old-school stuff can work like a dream. His infectious energy, non-stop chat, and sheer enthusiasm for being there, connect with the kids in the audience immediately (and gets a lot of the grownups going too). He starts out with a “where’s Sooty?” bit that has every child in the place screaming “over there!”, and never lets up. Of course, four-year-olds love seeing people get soaked with water pistols, but even I was taken aback that, when Cadell approached the front row armed with a giant squirt gun, my daughter demanded shrilly she get a bucketful, too.

That, she said afterwards, was her favourite bit; or maybe it was when Richard called a couple of kids up to the stage to play musical statues. I’ve never seen a show key in so perfectly to a four-year-old’s sense of humour. On the other hand, you won’t thank the Sooty empire’s proficiency in offering up take-home glove puppets and giant glowing magic wands with “Izzy Wizzy Let’s Get Busy” printed down the side. (I got away with just a £5 raid; most people seemed to be spending far more.)

I now have a theory about kids entertainment. There are some shows parents like, and children are baffled by; other shows that parents like to think their children will like, and which the children enjoy, up to a point; and shows like this that hit the nail right on the head for kids but don’t make much sense to their parents. You won’t always entirely approve of Sooty and chums’ quarrelsome ways, or their penchant for whacking each other over the head with balloons, but your children will love it. You just have to trust them on that.

• The Sooty Show is on tour now