Anna Burnside reviews ‘a sweet show.’
On board a long distance flight, a nervous flyer (female) is seated beside a reassuring old hand (male). It’s not the most original meet-cute but all romcoms have got to start somewhere.
It is, however, a great premise for object theatre, with many different vehicles, different grades of airline meal and back story told via the medium of Sindy-type dolls.
And when it’s clear that things are actually going horribly wrong, it’s a great opportunity to put the balloons aside and pivot to the type of Ted Talk theatre that involves a white board and asking the audience lots of questions.
This is the bit where we learn that the chances of being in a plane crash are 29.4 million to one. Driving to a shopping centre is statistically much more distance. There’s also a quick aeronautics lecture for those of us who didn’t pay attention to physics at school.
Visible Fictions excel in this type of storytelling. Zoe Hunter and Martin McCormick are charming in character, quick handed with the tiny aeroplanes and knitted sandwiches and believable with the whiteboard and marker pens.
Director Douglas Irvine keeps it bouncing along and the soundscape, the work of Kevin Murray and Andy McGregor, is particularly effective. It’s a sweet show just, despite the big themes, quite slight.
Up tours throughout Scotland until October 5, 2024. For tour details, go to Visible Fiction’s website.
RSS