An atmospheric and beautifully performed wander through a mythic world, but its dense storytelling and light-touch interactivity stop it fully landing for younger audiences.Rating
Good!
Following last year’s highly acclaimed The Holy King and the Oak King, BAC reunites with Wild Rumpus for another festive offering: A Merry Misrule, advertised as an immersive, interactive Christmas adventure for ages 3+. Inspired by the Icelandic myth of the Yule Cat and reimagined with a distinctly urban London twist, it sets up the promise of an alternative Christmas tale where young audiences become part of a quest to save the world.
The audience (always a compact group of no more than around twenty-five) is framed as “merry misrulers”, guided through a sequence of atmospheric installation-style rooms. In theory, we are characters inside the story – moving, responding, helping – but the experience lands somewhere between promenade theatre and guided storytelling, rather than full interaction.
The first character we meet is Revolutionary Rabbit (Jack Reilly), bold, loving his blingy shiny suit, and wonderfully forthright about how we should behave and where our loyalties must lie. From there, we move to Pigeon’s charity-shop emporium (played by Louise Mellor) – a space celebrating recycling, reuse, and the hidden histories behind well-loved objects – before arriving at a woodland kitchen, complete with campfire glow, hosted by Mouse (Oriana Charles).
Before all this begins, though, we are gathered in a striking introductory room plastered with cat faces and authoritarian slogans: a Big Brother-style warning of the controlling Yule Cat who watches over all. It instantly establishes the stakes and tone – softly dystopian, slightly rebellious, and full of whispered threat.
Throughout, performers speak in rich, poetic language – lyrical, image-heavy monologues delivered at a brisk pace. These are beautifully performed, with impressive nuance and physical detail (and considering they perform up to eight shows a day, it’s astonishing that, being show seven of the day, it feels so fresh). But the density of the text means it can be quite hard to follow what’s happening moment to moment. At a little under 45 minutes long, there is a lot of ground to cover clearly.
The design work throughout is excellent. The charity-shop room is warm and full of elaborate detail; the campfire space is atmospheric and magical – you want to curl up and stay there listening to night-time stories; and the final room opens into a wider space with sync panels where clever projections allow the mysterious, much-feared Yule Cat to leap and circle around us. These environments feel richly imagined and carefully woven into the wider narrative.
However, the interactivity never fully lands. The performers ask questions, and responses are warmly acknowledged, but the story moves on too quickly for real exchange. Even the end-of-show song, which we are encouraged to join in with, seems slightly tacked on – enjoyable, but not fully earned. When the piece finishes, you’re left wanting to stay, to chat properly with Rabbit and Mouse and the delightful Cat puppet, and to explore the rooms on your own, in your own time, to understand more deeply why everyone fears the Cat.This is quality work – inventive, thoughtful, and performed with real theatrical skill, technique, and strong commitment. But calling it suitable for 3+ feels ambitious. Older children – say 7 or 8+ – would grasp the themes, quest structure, and emotional undercurrents far more easily. As it stands, A Merry Misrule is an intriguing, atmospheric experience, but a little too dense and under-interactive to fully ignite for its young audience.
Writer and Director: Hal Chambers
Assistant Director: Tash Marks
Sound Designer: Benjamin Hudson
Lighting Designer: Greg Akehurst
Associate Set Designer: Kirsty Barlow
A Merry Misrule runs at Battersea Arts Centre until Sunday 24 December
