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A boldy themed, fantastical call to action, saving the world from climate change.Summary
Rating
Good
On a lovely summer day, it’s surprising to find an outdoor theatre right in the middle of Canary Wharf. Surrounded by enormous towers housing big business and finance, the pop-up Greenhouse Theatre seems rather incongruous but lovely. The venue is apparently the UK’s first zero-waste performance space. Built on-site and made entirely from found and recycled materials, its design is intended to encourage people to realise the impact they can have on the course of the climate crisis, and it’s in this thematically appropriate context that Patch Plays set out to broach that subject with a young audience.
Birdie’s Adventures in the Animal Kingdom tells the story of ten year old Birdie who, on her birthday, finds a puppy neglected by her neighbour. She makes friends with a talking robin, and together they set off round the world to find someone to look after the pup properly. En route they meet other animals, learning how their habitats and lives are being damaged by human-influenced climate change, and discuss what behaviours can be altered to save the planet.
This is a pleasant musical production, aimed at children from five to nine years old. It leans more towards the younger end of that age range as it manoeuvres a fine balance between fact and fantasy. Writer and composer Grace Joy Howarth serves up some enjoyable songs and harmonised pieces, well-executed under the musical direction of Griffin Jenkins. Meanwhile, the energetic cast of four (Anna Moorey, Grace Ackary, Amy Margaretta and Paul Bruce) make good use of the circular space to engage their young audience to the full, even as they battle background traffic noise.
The script is bold in dealing with important themes of environmental damage, but perhaps needs some tightening up. Ideas of individual responsibility, veganism, destruction of habitat, melting ice-caps, are raised in conversations with the affected animals. However, with multiple characters in just 50 short minutes it is difficult to develop any relationships with them and so empathise adequately with their plights. Less might be more in this case. Also, in the storyline there’s an apparent process of Birdie collecting items from the animals that then doesn’t seem to lead anywhere.
Although well-performed, it’s a bit of a stylistic stretch between the squeakily saccharine characterisation of Moorey’s Birdie (who seems younger than her proposed ten years) and the more modern portrayal of neighbour Steve, played with entertaining relish by Bruce. Steve is a great character: his recognisable behaviours, normality and complacency give a helpfully realistic edge to the overall message of responsibility, reinforcing it. And it’s satisfying when his redemption is not made easy: this human ‘Destroyer’, guilty through selfish negligence and laziness, is made to work for forgiveness by the animals. Largely, though, his characterisation seems so far removed from the sugary young heroine and her fantasy world (including a weirdly resurrected mother) that their relationship doesn’t really correspond. I’d find Birdie more believable if she were less perfect.
It appears that the production has reused and recycled clothing for costumes, which speaks admirably to ideas of environmental conscientiousness. But some attention to detail – sewing up unfinished hems and ensuring costumes are closed up at the back – would give a more professional finish.
Birdie’s Adventures is certainly an enjoyable production with a capable cast, but in overplaying the sentimentally fantastic the message’s efficacy is diluted. If it built on the strengths and relied less on stereotypical approaches to children’s theatre, it would deliver its important, very real message to a young, modern audience more convincingly.
Writer, Composer and Co-Produced by: Grace Joy Howarth
Director and Co-Produced by: Anastasia Bunce
Musical Direction by: Griffin Jenkins
Birdie’s Adventures in the Animal Kingdom has completed its current run at The Greenhouse Theatre.
