Carnival

Compagnia Rodisio has created a production that’s unlike anything else you’ve seen in children’s theatre recently. Made through a series of workshops with local Southwark schoolchildren, in it performer Silvia Mercuriali leaps, shuffles and struts through a series of vignettes that encompass everything from the trials of a dancing cardboard box to a social gathering of plastic toy dinosaurs.

If this sounds surreal, that’s because it most definitely is: the pieces often evoke the feeling of having crash-landed bang into the middle of someone else’s dream. Amongst the beguiling cast of characters created by Capece are a hyperactive cockerel who performs an unforgettable version of ‘Aquarius’ (from the 1970s musical ‘Hair’) in sky-high heels, a bent-double old lady who silently and meticulously stages her own party, complete with tea trolley and digestive biscuits, as well as a rather macabre ‘Day of the Dead’-style dancing skeleton.

The scenes, which are by turns funny, thoughtful and poignant, perfectly conjure the slightly anarchic and intense universe of children’s play, where the child’s inner world acquires its own meaning and rules, and are totally preoccupying. This is a joyful, colourful, challenging production, that refreshingly refuses to patronise its audience by overexplaining (or explaining anything at all) and celebrates those flashes of imagination, half-framed thoughts and day dreams, which should be cherished by children and adults alike. Ages 4-7. Rebecca Taylor