Author: Brett Herriot

**** (4 stars)

A man in overalls is standing in front of three metal panels.  The radio is playing what sounds like a discussion of football managerships’ tactics.  Suddenly a large pole appears behind the screen and is chucked over into the Man’s space.  He immediately banishes it to the outer darkness.  A stream of other objects follows, all meeting the same fate: it seems as though the Man’s space must be kept clear of all extraneous items…

The object-thrower is revealed as a Young Man in a scarlet tracksuit: he doesn’t seem to appreciate the Man’s desire for order, but revels in creating disorder and generally Having Fun.  He is soon kitted out in a set of overalls, and the two start to co-operate as Dolly Parton belts out Nine to Five – if only the workplace could always be this much fun!

The relationship between the Man (Robbie) and Young Man (Alfie) goes through many phases.  At times playful, at others combative, alone and together the two dance – though ‘dance’ is insufficient to describe the mixture of acrobatics, clowning, gymnastics, antics and risk-taking these two enjoy showing to us.  Joy, anger, fear, hurt, loneliness, unwarranted nastiness, a growing mutual affection, a caring tenderness towards each other are all displayed without words: at the end of the show both parties have grown in their relationships with themselves and with each other.

In some ways, The Show for Young Men is very much a show for men, especially the ones who find it impossible to express in words anything about their feelings, both positive and negative.  I personally found the recurrent recorded football talk very distracting, though for many people it might have been an ignorable background noise.  I found the use of music much more meaningful [but then, I’m a musician, not a football follower!]

What was staggeringly impressive was Alfie’s physical skills and absolute trust in Robbie: never doubting that he would be held, caught, supported, brought safely to earth, no matter what he was doing.  An added bonus was a song from him halfway through – not all the words were clear, but it seemed to be about being aware of ‘the warning signs’: a message to us all, I feel.

Robbie Synge (man) and Alfie (young man) were not only performing amazing physical feats, but also moving – whirling! – the component parts of the set around them as they did so.  All in all, GuestHouse Projects in co-production with Aaben Dans, Denmark have produced a superb show which I hope enthrals and amazes audiences both in the UK and Denmark.

It’s a lovely way for me to end this year’s Imaginate Festival.  Congratulations to everyone involved in making it happen, and roll on 2026!

Imaginate Children’s Festival: The Show for Young Men, Festival Theatre Studio, Edinburgh, Runs until Sunday 1^st June for more information go to: https://www.imaginate.org.uk/festival/whats-on/the-show-for-young-men

***** (5 stars)

“Scarily prescient!” 

Before the show begins, a recorded announcement reminds us several times not to switch off our phones, so that our whereabouts are known “at all times”.  Felix and Felka march on stage and invite us to sing along with them in praise of the Pale Baron of the Underwater State, whose birthday it is next week – but it soon becomes apparent that we don’t know the words. 

We must learn them – it is most important that we are loud in our praise of the Baron, who alone has the right to hold his enormous jewelled talking stick.  He has arranged that on his birthday 1,000 new stars will be catapulted into the heavens where they will stick: there will be no more shooting stars.  Felix and Felka are concerned that our singing is not loud and enthusiastic enough, that we don’t know the words:  we must praise the Baron’s glorious body, wonderful memory and above all his right to wield his magnificent talking stick.

Felix and Felka seem on edge: is there someone hanging around outside? is there someone in the loading dock? Is there the danger of an inspection?  Are the people in the audience okay?  Do they know why they are really there?  It’s okay, it’s safe to get on with what we’re really here for – a performance by Felix and Felka of their own songs, revolutionary songs, which they can’t perform in public, and which celebrate the poets who have disappeared. 

The Pale Baron hates many things and people, but he especially hates poets: poets don’t rhyme, and there can be a lot of meaning in the blank spaces between the lines.  Children must be under constant supervision: there must be NO questions.  Public radio announcements constantly reinforce the message that that the world is a shop, which must constantly be kept going.  People must prove that they are useful and productive, or they will be reclassified as ‘inferiors’.  It is a public duty to inform the authorities about ‘inferiors’, and most especially those most loathsome ARTISTS.  Foreigners are looking for land, but are redundant and inferior: the Underwater State is only for birthright residents.

Felix and Felka keep reiterating their ‘good’ credentials: they are not poets, they are musicians – but it’s clear they are constantly on edge.  We learn that Felka is from everywhere and nowhere, born in a country that doesn’t exist any more, lost my mother tongue, have no roots…. Felix, on the other hand, has never lived anywhere else: he is stable, a base to rely on, someone with deep roots.  We are introduced to Ronnie, a plant that had to be rescued when the water came, and is now an indoor plant who accompanies the two musicians on tour.

The music is fascinating mix of styles and genres.  Sometimes it’s hard to hear the lyrics, which was a pity, given that they were extremely pertinent.  I particularly liked the quiet lament the sea climbs into the sun: look, the land goes under, the love song to the earth, and the final song in which Felix hopes that Felka finds somewhere in the stars where she could finally put down roots.  The audience really loved the dwarf song [the Pale Baron is extremely fond of dwarfs, most possibly because they are smaller than he is…].

The depth of the relationship between Felix and Felix gradually becomes very clear to us – but do they realise it themselves?  I was surprised by how gripped the young audience were, how totally engaged in the ‘are they aren’t they’ relationship, and how much they wanted the couple to be together.  I did wonder if they’d be held by the breaks in lively action, especially when it got bleakly serious: credit to the actors, they held them through the difficult bits, and the questions asked afterwards showed a keen interest in both the play and the players.

The undercurrent of fear in this world was brilliantly portrayed.  I would be interested to know quite how much they understood of the repressive, judgemental and ‘othering’ society that was being evidenced.  The emphasis on borders, outsiders, moving on, punishment and repression of anything inventive, creative, questioning, were clear to the adults present: did the kids also pick up on these?  Oh to be a fly on the classroom wall when the show was being discussed back in school – and I hope it led into conversations about how to prevent such things becoming even more of a reality than they already are…

The Belgian company Kopergietery originally performed The Pale Baron in Dutch, and re-learned it in English, for which I [and probably the rest of the audience] am/ are profoundly grateful.  Anna Vercammen wrote the words, and Joeri Joeri Cnapelinckx made the music for the songs which run throughout the show.  Between them they sing, play piano, guitar, euphonium, pocket trumpet and a strange analogue device with many voices.  They slowly create a scarily accurate picture of a world in which a monstrous egomaniac controls everything, while everyone who displeases him meets a very unpleasant end.

The Pale Baron will remain with me for some time to come – I hope it will prompt me to action, too.

Imaginate Children’s Festival, The Pale Baron, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Runs until Saturday 31^st May for more information go to: https://www.imaginate.org.uk/festival/whats-on/the-pale-baron

***** (5 stars)

“Magic of the Highest Order!”

Amazing! Such a contrast from yesterday’s show: rows and rows of silent children, utterly gripped by what was unfolding in front of them, wondering what on earth was coming next.

A simple set – three screens surround a low square table which holds an anglepoise-type lamp, a teapot and two mugs.  Two people sitting having a drink when suddenly the lamp goes out.  They clink their mugs together and it comes on again – but after a few times, the magic stops working and they wonder what to do.  Removing the bulb reveals something inside it – when it falls into one of the mugs a tiny person is released and starts to grow.  They explore the table-top world on which they find themself, their tiny clogs clicking and clacking across the table, up and along the lamp’s angled arm, and out into the wide world…

This is magic of the highest order, created by a team of three – puppeteers Clara Palau y Herrero and Sarah Chaudon and director/ technician Tobias Tonjes, who between them invite us into a wonderful exploration of the world of shadows.  At first the shadows behave as you might expect, mirroring the actions of the person casting the shadow.  But then they take off and have a life of their own, making the shadow-caster become the copier of their shadow… how does a spoon become a fish? An aeroplane?  

Where do shadows go in the darkness?  How does one person interact with one, two, then three shadow people at once?  What happens when shadow mugs decide to act by themselves? Watch their acrobatics, see them waltz to the gentle music – aaagh!  What’s happening – there’s a hideous sound of breaking crockery…???  When the tea party scenario returns, how can the shadow person drink when there are no shadow mugs?

There’s a wonderful bit where lights themselves take on a life of their own – dancing across the screens, even trapping the actors’ silhouetted heads inside them so that one silhouette at one point swallows the other: but not for long!  The two lights play some more and then merge and expand to reveal the table set for tea… the spotlight shrinks till there’s just the mug and the tiny person, who explores the set again before jumping up into the lamp again. Which goes out.

The Tangram Collective have produced a truly wonder-full show exploring how amazing shadows are, which it’s obvious their young audience enjoyed hugely.  In the Q&A session at the end some marvellous questions were posed, from which we learned that the show took seven weeks to make, and was based on a lot of deep research into the philosophy of shadows; that it takes several years for children to connect shadows with the objects that make them, seeing them at first as completely separate entities; and that the company has given some 320 performances to date in many European countries – and now in Scotland.

I absolutely loved Shades of Shadows!  Alas, this was the last performance – I would have loved to see it again…

Imaginate Children’s Festival presents Tangram Kollektiv: Shades of Shadows Festival Theatre Studio, Edinburgh, RUN ENDED

**** (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