The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show

A childhood book, a festival slot, a company in New York

Jonathan Rockefeller was born in Australia and grew up on the locally made puppetry that Australian television turned out in quantity. He went on to co-found Rockefeller Productions, a company working across film, theatre, animation, puppetry and television from New York. He has said that The Very Hungry Caterpillar was one of his favourite books as a child and that he still has his original copy, and that the idea of putting Eric Carle on a stage came to him roughly a decade before the show's Los Angeles holiday run of 2023 — which places the first thinking around 2013.

The source material is one of the most widely distributed picture books in print. Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar was published on 3 June 1969 by the World Publishing Company, has sold more than 55 million copies, and has appeared in over 70 languages. Philomel Books handled it from 1981, and Penguin Random House has held global rights since 2013, buying the title outright from Carle in 2019.

The stage version opened at the Riverside Theatre as part of the Sydney Festival, running 8 to 18 January 2015, and went straight into an Australian national tour taking in Melbourne, Brisbane, Penrith, Queanbeyan and Newcastle.

The puppets do the adapting

The production does not rewrite Carle. Rockefeller has said the original text has not changed since the show first went up, and that because every puppet is built to match Carle's illustrations, the author stayed involved through development. Rockefeller described it in November 2023 as "wonderful to get to know Eric over many years through the different iterations of the show". Carle himself said of the adaptation that he was happy the performances would be enjoyed by many and that the colourful characters would bring comfort and joy to all who saw the stories. He died in May 2021, aged 91.

The original figures were built by the New York workshop Puppet Kitchen. By 2023 Rockefeller was describing the 75 life-sized puppets as designed and made in his own in-house studio, The Rock Shop. Cast size shifts with the edition: three performers worked the whole menagerie in the Los Angeles holiday staging, four on the 2026 British tour.

Four books a night, and a swap for the festive season

The bill is not fixed. The first Australian and off-Broadway versions paired the title story with The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse, Mister Seahorse and The Very Lonely Firefly. The British touring edition now runs Brown Bear, Brown Bear, 10 Little Rubber Ducks and The Very Busy Spider before closing on The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

At Christmas, The Very Busy Spider drops out and Carle's Dream Snow takes its place — the arrangement used for the Los Angeles run of 25 November 2023 to 21 January 2024, and for the festive dates at the Pavilion Theatre from 18 December 2026 to 3 January 2027. The New York bill at the DR2 differs again, pairing the Caterpillar with The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse, Mr Seahorse and The Very Busy Spider, the last of those billed as its full-scale United States debut. A separate variant, The Eric Carle Story Show, appeared in 2023.

Off-Broadway, the West End and twenty countries

The off-Broadway debut came at the 47th Street Theatre on Theatre Row, playing 30 January to 27 March 2016, and drew a Drama Desk nomination that year for Unique Theatrical Experience. Britain followed in the autumn: Nottingham Playhouse, the Orchard in Dartford, Warwick Arts Centre, Luton Library Theatre and Broxbourne, then a West End season at the Ambassadors Theatre from 2 December 2016 to 8 January 2017.

From there the map widened. Dubai in 2017, an off-Broadway return at the DR2 from September 2017 to May 2018, Toronto and Seattle in 2018, Chicago in 2019 alongside an Asian tour through Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo. A summer 2022 London run played the Lyric Hammersmith. The company puts the cumulative reach at more than twenty countries and three million children.

The tenth anniversary was marked with a revival at The Duke on 42nd Street running from September 2024 into January 2025, alongside a United States national tour.

Where it stands in autumn 2026

The 2026 British tour opened at Harrogate Theatre on 16 February and closed at York Theatre Royal on 11 April, taking in twenty theatres. It was produced by Rockefeller Productions with ROYO, with Sophie Hirst as UK associate director and a cast of Abigail Bailey, Oliver Davis, Connor Keetley and Amber Wadey. On 13 February the producers added further dates, including first visits to MAC Birmingham, Royal & Derngate in Northampton and the New Wolsey in Ipswich.

The road does not stop there. Confirmed British and Irish dates run through The Lowry in Salford from 26 October to 1 November 2026, Norwich Theatre Playhouse from 24 to 29 November, the Pavilion Theatre from 18 December to 3 January in the Christmas edition, Hull New Theatre from 12 to 14 February 2027, Liverpool's Everyman and Playhouse from 16 to 20 February and Hall for Cornwall in Truro from 26 to 28 February.

In New York the show continues at the DR2 Theatre on East 15th Street off Union Square, with performances on 26 and 27 September 2026 scheduled four times a day at 10am, noon, 2pm and 4pm. The 2026–27 American national tour so far lists Nashville Children's Theatre from 14 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, The Eagle Theatre in Sugar Hill, Georgia from 6 to 27 March 2027, and Chicago Children's Theatre from 11 April to 13 June 2027, with the producers saying more cities are to come.

What the critics have made of it

Time Out's London notice ran the production as recommended, clocking it at an hour, pricing it between £15 and £25, and pointing out that the caterpillar of the title does not turn up until the final quarter. The reviewer singled out bubbles filling the auditorium to open the underwater Mister Seahorse sequence, put the upper age limit at about six or seven, and warned that nappy-changing facilities at the Ambassadors were thin on the ground.

Ron Simpson reviewed the closing date of the 2026 tour at York Theatre Royal for The Reviews Hub on 10 April. He credited the range of puppets given movement — walking, running, flying, swimming — and the fidelity to Carle's designs, and described the metamorphosis into the butterfly as the point at which the vast majority of the audience became entranced. His reservations were that the four puppeteers are given no distinct personalities of their own and that the show lacks the air of spontaneity found in the best children's theatre.

Older pull quotes still travel with the production: The New York Times called it bedazzling, and Newsday rated it five smiles.