Theatre

At last! An OSBTT Award-winning show that’s well worth the price of the ticket (let alone the £27K award-pot). After past technology-laden turkeys, this year the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust awarded r&d development grants to four short-listed companies with ‘innovative’ theatre proposals, then picked the winner on the basis of a practical presentation. Result? A charmingly inventive piece of experimental theatre which plays even better than it promises to on paper. 

Traditionally, OSBTT assists young companies who think outside the box. Yorkshire-based theatre-makers Slung Low up-end that idea by taking the audience into the box –  quite literally; each of the five scenes in this 35-minute show takes place in a custom-built wooden box-room with space for one viewer. Taking the audience immersively into your world is, as companies like Punchdrunk have proved, infinitely more transporting than letting them contemplate your lack of structured narrative from the wrong side of the conventional ‘fourth wall’. ‘Helium’ also cures the usual promenade hiccups of getting from a-to-b or actually finding c by having reassuringly friendly boiler-suited ushers to guide you from scene to scene.

In some ways there isn’t a lot to make sense of here. A girl reads her dying grandfather’s diary; you spy in on scenes from his past; try to discover who the German-accented voice inside his head belongs to; and determine why he gave her a balloon each year for her birthday. The emotional wherefores are clearer than the practical ones. But the script is quirkily apt and touching (‘turning a page is like opening a door’), despite the lack of development. And the dioramas you enter  (they include a miniature cinema and the bomb-chamber of a WW2 bomber) are wonderful, combining the art of film and the homespun, heartfelt craft of theatre with wistfulness and wit.