Go ahead and scream, kid

The big, scaly stars of 'Walking with Dinosaurs' at Impact Arena seem too real to be machines

Rule of evolution: Dinosaurs thrill scientists and children alike, but only the kids scream.

And it's a scream-a-thon all this weekend as 20 life-like monsters roam around the stage at Impact in "Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular".

BEC Tero Entertainment spent more than Bt50 million to bring in the computer-controlled giant reptiles and their 150 handles for 12 shows. The 90-minute production, based on a BBC television series, is currently touring Asia.

Wednesday's premiere was the first chance for the Thai audience to zoom back in time 200 million years and see dinosaurs stalking a world that was unfamiliar, primordial, steamy - and vibrant with hi-tech light and sound.

Your host is a character called The Anthropologist, and from a stage formed by a dinosaur's scary, toothy jaws, he tells their story.

The whole evolution of the "terrible lizards" is covered, right up to the climatic and geological changes that led to their extinction.

Director Scott Faris, who normally has humans dancing and singing on Broadway, choreographs 10 different species of lumbering, scaly reptiles.

The star, of course, is Tyranno-saurus Rex, the most famous terrorist of the ancient terrain, but he arrives late in the saga. Earlier on, in the Triassic Period, there are Plateosaurus and Liliensternus. Then come the Stegosaurus and Allosaurus, straight out of "the park" in the Jurassic Period and the Cretaceous era that followed.

Unable to help but dominate the scene in those days was Brachiosaurus, fully 15 metres tall and well over 25 metres from its nose to the tip of its tail.

Some of these leathery robots actually do battle, and the roar of their combat gets the kids screaming even louder. The fiercest contest of all pits a six-metre Torosaurus against a 12-metre T Rex and an 11-metre Ankylosaurus, and last beast standing takes all.

Not quite as exciting buy still truly awesome is the sight of a 12-metre-long Ornithocheirus gliding high above the ground against vast projected imagery of the ocean and mountains.

The Anthropologist, by comparison, is downright dull, it has to be said. The narration is packed with scientific facts and a little hard to focus on when you know there's another dinosaur lurking offstage.

But the adults are just as enthralled by the youngsters to see the huge creatures walking side by side with the human emcees. Imagine a pair of two-tonne Brachiosaurs strolling along together, gently touching heads in affection, just as today's animals do.

All of their movements are controlled by computer engineers offstage, but the trick to their marvellous facial expressions is a human "puppeteer" embedded inside.

Fifty structural engineers, fabric makers, graphic artists and animatronics experts spent a year building the 20 dinosaurs in the show in a studio in Melbourne, Australia, that could also be used, if needed, to park a Boeing 747.

"Many of the technologies we're using are borrowed from film," engineer Sonny Tilders explains. "The computer software and hardware we developed are based on actual feature films that have come out.

"To make it appear that these creatures are flesh and blood, we use a system of 'muscle bags' made from a stretch mesh fabric and filled with polystyrene balls, stretched across moving points on the body. They bond and stretch in the same way that muscle, fat, and skin do on real creatures."

"Voodoo rigs" of the sort routinely used in animatronics puppetry make some of the dinosaurs move, Tilders says.

"The puppeteer manipulates the voodoo rig and these actions are sent to the computer and transmitted by radio waves to make the hydraulic tube in the actual dinosaur complete the action."

Puppeteers perched inside the creatures operate five of the smaller dinosaurs.

The production is like an especially fascinating, 90-minute visit to a science museum, and quite enjoyable for family members - but parents are warned that the sound effects and the audience reactions might be too loud for children under three.

DRAGON DAYS

"Walking with Dinosaurs" continues until Sunday at Impact Arena in Muang Thong Thani.

Tickets cost Bt500 to Bt2,000 from www.ThaiTicketMajor.com and (02) 262 3456.