Imaginate

Tales of a Grandson
FOUR STARS

The Story of the Little Gentleman
FOUR STARS

National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

Mary Brennan

The opening weekend of this year’s Imaginate found the International Children’s Festival flying a proud flag for home-grown theatre-making. With good reason too, for both of the above productions offer story-telling at its most effective. Hugely entertaining yet full of life lessons and humanity as well – and free of that worthy air that’s hard to swallow, whatever age you are.

READ MORE: Music review: Brian Wilson, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
With cellist Wendy Weatherby in lively, tuneful cahoots, Andy Cannon slipped back in time to the tea-cakes and happy jaunts of his own childhood. In Tales of a Grandson (age 7+) he’s re-worked the initial three-part epic into an hour or so in which the spirit of his 1976 dips into Scottish history – fostered by a grandad whose imagination and curiosity was as outgoing as young Andrew’s – is still fizzing with the joys of discovering the past. The humour and affection that laces through his anecdotes and memories makes hard facts as tasty as those tea-cakes – catch it at the Traverse this week.

READ MORE: Music review: Brian Wilson, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
The Little Gentleman (Pete Collins) has just moved into the neighbourhood. He sets out to make friends but his ‘hallo-es!’ fall on deaf ears and soon loneliness is dispiritingly expressed in Collins’s beautifully-nuanced body language. And then The Dog (Isabelle Joss) lollops in, yowling and yapping, and The Story of the Little Gentleman – a Catherine Wheels production for ages 4 -8 – becomes a madcap tale of simple things that morph into something special because they’re shared. Okay, Dog’s affection is initially cupboard love. But we feel the bond strengthening, and we feel like howling when Dog’s overtures to audience members bring out destructive jealousy in the Gentleman – a wee girl is so concerned for him, she actually turns away from Joss’s ebullient Dog! The pathos is never over-egged by the performers, or by director Gill Robertson while – with typical resourcefulness – designer Karen Tennant has devised a ginormous packing case that, like the Little Gentleman’s life, opens up to become a home for him and Dog. This gem is at Southside Community Centre from tomorrow (Tuesday 31 May).