Seesaw

This slight, funny play for ages three to six is billed as a show about ‘the ups and down’ (geddit?) of friendship. And it is, centring as it does on Girl (Katherine Carlton) and Boy (Ben Hadi) as they come to the gradual realisation that the seesaw in the sandpit they both frequent is going to require a brace of operators. But ‘Seesaw’ – by Stewart Melton – is also a fine and droll study in the endearingly weird, borderline dysfunctional nature of young childhood friendship. Girl just wants to play with her toy rabbit, Hairy, and draw pictures in the sand. Boy would like to lie in the sand, and glug his individual apple juices, and pretend he’s on a space rocket. Though there is a sweet little bit of juice-related rapprochement at the end of Sarah Argent’s production, the two never exactly become friends – certainly not in the way an adult would understand it. But painstaking they form an amusingly prosaic alliance as they cobble together an understanding of the world around them.

It’s definitely a touch one-note, but it’s a charming, well-observed note which held the attention of the young audience who clearly saw Girl and Boy’s travails as relatable content. Unrest only blooms at the end, when the audience is invited to play in the sandpit – which they did rather boisterously when I saw it, to the obviously nervousness of the Unicorn’s ushers. It’s presumably a nightmare to clean up, but it’s a nicely mischievous little touch to round off a sweet but unsentimental 40 minutes.