Super Amazing Giant Girl

Unlike her predecessor, the 50 Foot Woman from the 1958 schlock movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Anna Lumb is about as wholesome as you can get.  She’s bright-eyed, fresh-faced, athletic and she has a great big grin.  Nor was her Super Amazing Giant Girl transformed by aliens: she just somehow… grew to giant size and had to leave her country town – after, it’s true, demolishing some of it - and came to the city.  But a Giant Girl doesn’t fit in in the city either… 

Super Amazing Giant Girl is fun for the kids and also a bit of an allegory about being ‘different’.  But Giant Girl’s freaky height difference doesn’t seem to worry the little kids in the audience: they just love her on sight and smiles break out all over the house.  I took my granddaughter, aged six, and she was entranced.

This is, after all, a show for little kids and they love seeing grown-ups act goofy, dance on roller skates, sing funny songs, balance on bottles and do amazing routines with coloured hoops.  In all this Ms Lumb is assisted by ‘special guest’ Gabi Barton.  She is smaller than Ms Lumb, but bigger than the Barbie doll (which later is Giant Girl’s aunt), so Ms Barton’s T-shirt reads NORMAL HUMAN (NOT TO SCALE) – which gets a laugh from the grown-ups.  Later in the show Ms Barton is a dancing pink star – and she overcomes her fear of Giant Girl and becomes her friend. 

Both these performers have wide experience in comedy and dance so while the show might look unsophisticated and simple, these two know exactly what they’re doing.  Both have a lot of warmth and there’s constant eye contact with the audience, so the kids are never excluded: they’re in on the jokes and part of the show.

Thomas William Butt contributes a terrific soundtrack, which includes big city noises, bouncy tunes and one song slowed…right…down so Ms Lumb can dance in slow motion.

The finale, which involves the entire audience, is a giant storm, complete with lightening and hail.  Well, you have to see it to find out how.

Afterwards, I sought the granddaughter’s verdict.  ‘Good.’  And which bits did she like best?  ‘Probably the songs – and the hoops.’  But I think that really she just liked Giant Girl and Normal Human.  There isn’t really much story to Super Amazing Giant Girl because most of it is singing and dancing and hoops, but it’s got a happy ending and if you’ve got kids of, say, up to eight, this will work for them.

Michael Brindley