**** (4 stars)
“An impressive range of talents”
Do children wonder what adults get up to while they are at school, at play, or once they have been safely tucked up in bed? Are they as in control as they would like to seem? Is it all a huge pretence?
An empty stage. Curtains each side, and at the back. A long orange cable snakes across the floor.
A roll of tape rolls into sight. Someone walks across the stage, whistling. The cable is slowly pulled into the wings. Someone wrestles with an inflated canvas shape which is trying to make a bid for freedom. It loses.
More random appearances, of people, things, rolls of tape, oranges… Something starts dripping on to the stage – gently at first, but more insistently. It is established that it isn’t pee, but no-one seems to have responsibility for this, or know what to do. One actor on the phone insists that everything is completely under control. Some ever more complex attempts are made at dealing with the problem, but they merely escalate the situation, which becomes increasingly tangled and bizarre.
Oranges are chopped up, lights blow, smoke billows into the audience, an actor wearing a giant head of Chekov joins the action. At one point the actors slowly realise that there is an audience of children watching them – and freeze. One of them suggests that they should give their audience ‘some theatre’ – that’s what they’ve come for. In defiance of the remark No theatre: we are grown ups and we are very busy, she keeps trying to ‘be theatrical’ with eccentric dance and movement and an increasingly absurd amount of fruit.
Compagnie Barbarie and Bronks present a show aimed ‘at age 4-12 years’ which certainly got the audience engaged and screaming – at some points I wondered if they would ever shut up and listen for long enough to find out what would happen next…
The comments from the children began quite sensibly – don’t let the water and the electricity meet, for example – but began to get out of hand as an ever-increasing bellow of “smash the glass” threatened to derail the whole show. I wonder what the performers made of this, and whether their audiences were usually better-behaved… I also wonder what a four-year-old would have made of it – certainly something very different from a twelve-year-old!
There was a gradual slowing of pace towards the end of the show, some very eccentric dancing by three ‘Chekovs’ and a final slow fade on a single cast member isolated in the midst of a mountain of chaos.
Amber Goethals, Lotte Vaes, Sarah Vangeel and Liesje De Backer displayed an impressive range of talents while coping with an increasingly vociferous audience. On the way out, one adult referenced Lord of the Flies, an apt reference to the uncontrollable way violence can erupt from seemingly very little. I certainly felt battered by the volume and intensity of the shouting coming from the kids around me: and wondered quite how much of the show they were actually taking in. I also wonder how their accompanying adults calmed them down and got them back to school in one piece!
Let’s see what else Imaginate has to offer in the next few days…
Compagnie Barbarie and Bronks: Grown Ups, As Part of Imaginate Children’s Festival Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Review- Runs until 28th May for more information go to: https://www.imaginate.org.uk/festival/whats-on/grown-ups
ScotsGay Arts 