Review: Commotion in the Ocean

Commotion in the Ocean is an environmental play ideally aimed at Key Stage 2 children. It comes in a musical package from Scripts to Stage, which includes tailored drama exercises, email support, a poster, tickers and a licence to perform. The play centres around sisters Katy and Henri, who are coming to terms with the death of their father. They spend a lot of time at the beach being looked after by their grandma while their busy scientist mum, Dr Watkins, is at work. When they’re on the beach with their friends, the sisters discover a sewage pipe leaking slime into the sea. The children rescue a range of sea creature from harm and soon notice that they are growing abnormally quickly. Meanwhile, at the lab, Dr Watkins clashes with her money-oriented boss and tries to work out why her experiment is failing. It transpires that waste from the lab is being dumped into the sea with huge consequences.

Commotion in the Ocean is a really engaging play with strong and relevant themes around the environment and how we can make small changes to help. It also touches on the difficulties Katy and Henri face after the loss of their dad, with their mum throwing herself into her work at the children’s expense. There is a lot of opportunity for class discussion with this play.

The script is accessible and features a range of human characters, as well as the sea creatures and a mob of marauding seagulls. The characters include serious introverted Katy, nervous Snorkels and pushy seagull Harry. It would be fun to explore the ensemble opportunities offered with the seagulls and the lab full of scientists.

There are five songs in the play and suggestions for choreography are included in the notes. The pack also includes sound cues, prop and costume lists, games and warm-ups, giving you all the information you need to put on a performance. The play has a running time of 60 minutes and can be performed with a cast from 22 up to 50, which would make it ideal for a Year 6 end-of-year play, but there are also lots of ways that it could also be used for classroom drama for both on and off-text work. This play has lots to offer and any Key Stage 2 teacher would find it a useful addition to their resources.