Emil And The Detectives

Adapted by Carl Miller from the novel by Erich Kaestner

1920s Berlin – Emil excitedly journeys from his little hometown on his first trip to The Big City! Then disaster strikes! His mother’s carefully saved money is stolen by a sinister man in a bowler hat. But Emil gathers up his courage and bravely plunges into the chaotic and bewildering city in pursuit. When he meets the Hollywood-mad, tough talking Toots, they pair up, gathering a crowd of street kids and Emil’s feisty cousin, Pony The Hat to form a gang of detectives. They don’t hang around. They plan. They organise. They persist and pursue! A play about the power of young people, in which Kaestner’s exuberant vision shows children coming together to outwit their elders, use their own skills and independence and challenge authority.

Breaking new ground in children’s literature the story subverted typical moralising and was a vital forerunner to the child detective genre later so successfully taken up by, amongst others, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven

Although Kaestner’s books were burned by the Nazis, Emil has never been out of print, has been translated worldwide and is now revived by the National Theatre in this fast paced adaptation, first performed at the Olivier Theatre in 2013.