“Will you find it?” said the posters across London, all week. I didn’t know what “it” was until I saw the pictures on BBC News. Apparently neither does anybody else outside London, though it’s been talked about non-stop all week within its borders. The Sultan’s Elephant is a production by the French Company Royal de Luxe, who aim to take theatre back to the people, from behind the closed doors back onto the streets and into the real world. And from the 4th - 7th May, the 40 ft high mechnical time travelling elephant packed up its trunk to visit the big city.The Sultan’s elephant is a Jules Verne story of a Sultan tormented by dreams of a time travelling girl. The Sultan comissioned an eccentric engineer from the year 1900 to build him a time machine so he could find the girl, and rid her from his dreams.So, that sounded like my kind of story really It’s London’s largest ever street theatre production, includes a real life 40 ft tall mechanical elephant operated by a huge team of puppeteers, and a no less impressive “giant” girl. As I walked through St James’ Park looking for the elephant, I stumbled across the crowd of people watching the girl asleep in a huge deck chair. I didn’t think the elephant would be that hard to find, but there were still large groups of wide-eyed city workers rushing around asking “have you seen the elephant?”, “where’s the elephant going to be next?” like junkies trying to find their next fix.

I knew exactly how they felt.

I watched the giant girl as kids were allowed to take part in the performance by sitting on her arms while they swung back and forth, and followed the crowd as we all walked alongside, in front of, and around the giant. This led me to Horse Guard Parade, where the finale was to take place.

The elephant was just huge, about 3 stories tall and whilst not quite as large as Whitehall, it still made a hugely impressive view. I’m not convinced over its ability to time travel - but the elephant was certainly a work of mechanical, and imaginative genius. Seeing it for real made me very glad I’d come into London to see what the fuss was about, and I could fully appreciate anyone who had spend the last 3 days following it everywhere it went, cheering at every sound of the trumpet, and squirt of water from the elephant’s trunk. You couldn’t help but turn to your neighbour and grin, it was that kind of atmosphere

A really unique show and a great day out, all for the bargain price of “totally free” … Today has been a good day