Hey, it’s a dinosaur!

THE lights go down, the smoke rises and the star of the show lumbers in. She is 36 feet tall and 49 feet long, and she has a score to settle.

THE lights go down, the smoke rises and the star of the show lumbers in. She is 36 feet tall and 49 feet long, and she has a score to settle. The preschoolers of Washington’s Tacoma Dome grab their mothers and older siblings clutch the sides of their seats. The angry T. rex is out to save her baby, a mini-rex who, despite being 15 feet long herself, is cornered by two brave herbivores. The giant predator spots her baby, charges at the offending dinosaurs and lets out a roar surely heard as far as Vancouver. At which point a 7-year-old seated about 20 feet away sheepishly turns to her dad. “Um, I’m not scared,” the girl whispers, “but she’s not coming up here, is she?”

Walking With Dinosaurs — The Live Experience is designed to thrill, educate and terrify (a little). It’s derived from the T. rex-size BBC series that attracted a whopping 770 million viewers from the time it first aired in 1999 and, later, on the Discovery Channel. The stage version is every bit as ambitious, and realistic. The tour features 15 eerily lifelike dinosaurs in a 90-minute stage production that cost $20 million to create.

What makes Dinosaurs different is that it’s derived from a non-children’s television show. “I know it would have been easier and safer to put together a more-traditional type of show,” says the show’s creator, Bruce Mactaggart. “But I thought, ‘Why not take a risk and aim for something totally new and different?’ Besides, what could be more fascinating to work with than a 45-foot-tall brachiosaur?” Take that, Barney.

The show begins with a “paleontologist” clad in safari gear, who hosts the proceedings from the stage. The creators weave all 163 million years of the dinosaur’s reign — from plate tectonics to the genesis of the dung beetle — into one colourful narrative. “I wanted to offer something that was entertaining and informative,” says Mactaggart.

It takes a crew of more than 150 humans to bring the giant lizards to life. Each of the dinosaurs is operated by three controllers — one who drives the dino from its base and two who remotely operate its motion. The gargantuan dinos are made of lightweight steel and crinkly latex skin, but it’s not just their size that matters. The smaller details — the brachiosaur’s inquisitive cock of the head, the predatory glint in the raptor’s eyes — are just as impressive.

Just about everyone in the kids’ entertainment business is watching to see if the dinosaurs can expand their audiences to older kids and, ultimately, parents. The dinosaurs are already stars in Australia, where Mactaggart (an Aussie) & Co. conceived them. But will American kids, who’ve long nursed a dino fixation in movies and museums, embrace these coldblooded entertainers? The opening-night audience of 7,000 in Tacoma was certainly dazzled by the spectacle, but the kids got restless during the factoid-heavy interludes. Funny, no one complained that the T.rex was too short, or too loud. (Newsweek)