FABULOUS percussion, fast'n'slick movement, flurries of daft clowning around and a realistic kitchen set that got the shakes, rattled - and rolled off before our very eyes...
Wow! Traverse, the opening show in Imaginate's festival of theatre for children and young people, just kept piling in the madcap capers and tricksy effects for wide-eyed audiences (aged 7+) while parading a singleton's drab beige-coloured loneliness. Elastic-limbed mime artist Emilien Gobard is the sad sack with a routine existence that runs like clockwork. But when his fantasies of romance, friends and fun start to come alive this production by Compagnie Arcosm (France) erupts into surreal escapism. Younger children might not follow some of the more sophisticated twists and turns, but they'll surely long to copy the two amazing percussionists who hijack cupboard doors, work surfaces, pans and cutlery into the stuff of stunning drumming. As for the title – it's an affectionate nod to the venue where Arcosm went down a storm at Imaginate 2009.
Back again too are Stella den Haag (Netherlands), this time weaving all their savvy understanding of adolescent growing pains – those hot and cold churning emotions and impulses – into the dark, twisted tale of Rumpelstiltskin. Their updated version homes in on the human frailties that, even without spooky supernatural interventions, can lead to miserable, complicated dilemmas with no obvious, easy solutions. Such scary choices, and surging hormones, propel our heroine into an adulthood she can't really handle. Even playing her beloved cello can't make any of it go away. It's thought-provoking territory for an 8+ audience, but the leavening of live music and some hilariously rude moments relieve the tensions of Rumpelstiltskin's chilling bid to invent a family at the expense of some-one else's.
A suicide attempt, especially when the would-be jumper is only t10 years old, is no laughing matter. There is, however, an element of off-the-wall comedy in Titus – directed by Lu Kemp and translated by Oliver Emanuel (in association with Stirling's MacRobert Centre) and aimed at 11+ audiences – that binds you to the character, makes you see the world through his eyes, lets you understand why he's going to such extremes. It's a beautifully structured, evocatively phrased monologue that is buoyantly, engagingly, inhabited by Joseph Arkely. He's chatty, cheeky, a little bit odd and increasingly compelling as the rigmarole of memories, anecdotes, fantasies and tall-ish tales spool out in an achingly affecting portrait of a lad who feels so lost and alone he wants to die. We'd rush the stage and save him before he stepped over the edge – fingers crossed this tours post-Imaginate.
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