Mark Brown

Bambino

Edinburgh Academy

Touring until September 22

BambinO, a chamber opera for babies by 2017 Sunday Herald Culture Award winner Lliam Paterson, has been revived for a richly-deserved, recent Edinburgh Fringe residency and a current Scottish tour. A co-production between Scottish Opera, London-based performing arts company Improbable and the Manchester International Festival (where it premiered last year), this delightful operetta has wowed infants and adults in Manchester, Paris and New York (among other places).

We often hear credit being given to the filmmakers behind such movie franchises as The Incredibles and Paddington for their capacity to entertain children and adults simultaneously. Similar praise should be heaped upon the team responsible for BambinO.

Paterson and director Phelim McDermott have fashioned a beautifully crafted little piece about a female bird (Uccellina) who finds an abandoned egg and adopts the baby bird (Pulcino; which, appropriately enough, is Italian for chick) which emerges from within it.

Sung in Italian and English, the show nods charmingly to operatic traditions, not least in the lovely costumes by designers Giuseppe Belli and Emma Belli, which combine the avian theme with luxurious 18th-century garb (the birds’ leather flying helmets and goggles are a wonderfully humorous touch).

The cleverness of this means little to babies, of course. For them the piece is a little paradise in which gorgeously tailored, splendidly performed operatic song (replete with echoes of birdsong and the tweets of infant birds) is combined with sumptuous, carefully considered music for cello and percussion.

If the song and music are pitched perfectly for little ears, the performance space itself is a veritable sensory playground. The babies are free to crawl around the ground level stage (which is strewn with cushions in cloud designs) and to interact with Hazel McBain (who will be replaced by Charlotte Hoather between September 10 and 22) and Samuel Pantcheff, who are tremendously gentle and communicative in the roles of Uccellina and Pulcino.

This mini-opera is, as Bertolt Brecht said in a different context, a “simple thing, so hard to achieve.” Paterson, McDermott and their company deserve every bouquet they receive for what is a perfect piece for the very youngest audience.

For tour dates for BambinO, visit: scottishopera.org.uk

South Bend

Gilded Balloon @ The Museum, Edinburgh

Touring until September 22

Also moving on from a residency on the Edinburgh Fringe to a tour of Scotland is South Bend, the latest drama from accomplished actor and playwright Martin McCormick. Directed by Ben Harrison for Edinburgh-based Grid Iron theatre company, the piece is, purportedly, an autobiographical play about a decidedly bizarre trip to the United States which McCormick made back in 2006.

Attempting to rekindle a love affair with a young woman from California, McCormick ends up in Indiana, where he finds the subject of his affections much changed. He also finds his progress blocked quite emphatically by his would-be girlfriend’s formidable, and decidedly hostile, stepmother.

McCormick (who is typically charming and watchable) tells this tale with the assistance of his impressive, Franco-American co-star Jess Chanliau (who plays a host of characters with tremendous energy and humour). David Pollock creates the soundtrack live on designer Claire Halleran’s set, a deliberate clutter of Americana mixed with a young, working-class Scotsman’s notion of domesticity. Lewis den Hertog provides fine video work which helps give the production a sense of momentum.

Enjoyable though it is, however, one can’t help but be disappointed by the modesty of the piece. Whilst there must, of course, be a place in Scottish theatre for such stories, there has, in the 21st-century, been a definite trend in plays that are based upon autobiography or are firmly rooted in personal experience. There is a risk of such work being preferred to more theatrically innovative and imaginative plays.

There is an irony in McCormick’s piece falling into the “modest millennial play” category. Hitherto, not least in his recent, and brilliant, absurdist comedy Ma, Pa And The Little Mouths, he has appeared to buck this particular trend.

For tour dates for South Bend, visit: gridiron.org.uk