Star rating: *** There must be homes all over the UK - and in Germany, France and beyond - where wee tin boxes and battered wooden chests hold memories of the First World War. But, 90 years after the November day that marked the armistice, it's unlikely anyone who lived through those times is still here to tell the tales connected to the medals, photographs, letters. Vivid and affecting remembrance comes, however, with this deftly-crafted two-hander by West Yorkshire's Thingumajig Theatre, which uses puppets, masks, live music and performance to take young audiences inside one family's experience of "the war to end all wars".

Star rating: ***

There must be homes all over the UK - and in Germany, France and beyond - where wee tin boxes and battered wooden chests hold memories of the First World War. But, 90 years after the November day that marked the armistice, it's unlikely anyone who lived through those times is still here to tell the tales connected to the medals, photographs, letters. Vivid and affecting remembrance comes, however, with this deftly-crafted two-hander by West Yorkshire's Thingumajig Theatre, which uses puppets, masks, live music and performance to take young audiences inside one family's experience of "the war to end all wars".

The set, with its crates and bric-a-brac, is a magnet for the girl (Kathy Bradley) who pesters her great-grandfather (a wonderful puppet, animated by Andrew Kim) to break his silence about the war and the younger brother who died fighting. But the old geezer can't talk about what he saw or what he did. So, one after another, the trunks and cases are opened up to recreate his past: laddish glove-puppets become uniformed Tommies, dodging snipers and digging trenches. Bradley narrates, plays other characters and musical instruments and sings the ditties Joan Littlewood used in her ground-breaking production of Oh! What a Lovely War. Kim seamlessly changes props and puppets, including a boisterous dog that has two masters, one on either side, because his loyalty knows no politics. But bullets know no compassion, and don't recognise a pooch in no-man's-land. A curious twist, perhaps, but one that somehow emphasises the futility and waste of a war that's compellingly remembered here.