Error 404

Epistemology for the over-eights? Don’t you just know it, kids. (Do you? Don’t you?) With the Polka theatre under new management, amiable performance-maker Daniel Bye has been drafted in to drum some philosophy into your little ‘uns (ages eight-plus).

Believe it or not, ‘Error 404’ works rather well. Bye kicks off by describing a dream in a dream in a dream in a dream (12 layers in all; ‘Inception’ eat your heart out) and his young audiences keep up like so many pint-sized Platos. From there, his story takes in all manner of classic conundrums, from a serial arsonist who undergoes a personality transplant to a robot that turns up spouting someone else’s memories from its hard-drive.

Centring on a young boy with a fondness for computer games, whose best mate and gaming partner loses his life, ‘Error 404’ is jam-packed with the big imponderables. Can you make friends with a robot? Are appearances deceptive or do they betray a person’s past? Do adults really know best? It’s all done in the most lay of layman’s terms and naturally inquisitive kids seem to grasp this stuff intuitively.

Admittedly, the storytelling’s a bit raggedy, skimming from one puzzling philosophical dilemma to the next, but that’s partly down to Bye’s form. He gives his audience ownership – brilliantly – by prompting the kids to complete his story with him, filling in character names and key plot points. It’s a witty way of mixing the pre-programmed with the undetermined and a great lesson in theatre. ‘Without you,’ Bye concludes, ‘this wouldn’t have been the same.’
 
For so long, kids’ theatre has felt confined, tethered to syllabi and put out to a purpose. Why shouldn’t it aim for the same sense of wonder as ‘adult’ theatre? Why shouldn’t it blow their tiny minds? ‘Error 404’ proves it’s possible. Good thing too.