Review: Take Flight, Grand Junction

There’s something beautifully mellow and charming about Take Flight, Rebel Sparks’ gentle introduction to theatre for ages 0–2 years. The show combines live music, movement, sensory play and aerial circus, creating a warm, welcoming environment that clearly delights its audience, even if it has potential for more.

Audiences are greeted by a beautifully judged, semi-improvised musical welcome. Accompanied by ukulele, children are acknowledged individually and invited into the world of the show. Soft sensory bags sit among them, colourful lighting warms the space, and two bird-like characters emerge: a yellow-and-silver chick (Rika Fujimoto) and its orange-clad mother (LJ Willow). The atmosphere is calm, playful and reassuring from the outset.

Director Ria Ashcroft and the company clearly understand the rhythms of life with a baby. The show explores familiar daily experiences: waking, feeding, burping, playing, resisting sleep and, ultimately, growing in confidence. Parents in the audience chuckled knowingly at references to bodily functions, while babies were captivated by colours, textures and gentle interactions unfolding around them.

Hannah Boothman’s visual design is particularly engaging. A textured aerial structure sits centrally, surrounded by brightly lit mounds of colour. Costumes cleverly evoke birds without becoming overly literal, and there are lovely moments of object play, particularly a delightful sequence involving socks when the baby bird gets cold, and a feeding routine featuring colourful worms that become both props and playthings.

The show is at its strongest musically, fusing live singing, instrumental performance and recorded sound to create a rich sensory environment. A sequence featuring a pan drum is especially lovely, while the singing brings charming intimacy throughout. Yet it is here that one of the production’s frustrations emerges. The songs are so effective at creating connection it feels a missed opportunity not to use them more consistently as a storytelling and audience-guidance tool. Instead, the narrative is interspersed with a mishmash of gobbledygook language. While the intonation and feel are there, it might be more cohesive if there were a nod to bird chatter while carefully placed words and human expressions would allow the audience to make clearer connections with the lyrical passages.

Participation, too, feels slightly underdeveloped. The sensory nests and play materials within the audience have huge potential for engagement, but the boundaries of participation aren’t clear. Parents seemed unsure how actively they were invited to join in, and the performers’ tentative forays into the audience never develop into fully realised interaction.

Given the show’s aerial premise, it surprisingly takes almost 25 minutes before the silks are used in any substantial way. The production repeatedly teases the apparatus, hinting at its possibilities, but the aerial storytelling only truly arrives when the baby bird leaves the nest, exploring its desire to fly. The show then suddenly lifts as the silks become wings, the aerial movement gains purpose, and the emotional metaphor of growing up and letting go becomes beautifully clear. These final flying sequences, accompanied by an uplifting song encouraging children to “open your wings”, are genuinely moving. Here, Take Flight finds the magic hinted at throughout.

Presented within the stunning Victorian church of Grand Junction, the production immediately benefits from its surroundings. Grand Junction continues to prove itself a remarkable community-focused venue, and today’s audience reflected that mission: local families, many seemingly new to live performance, welcomed through the venue’s pay-what-you-can policy. It is exactly the kind of audience development that theatre for the very young should be nurturing. Take Flight sits well here.

This is a charming, thoughtful and visually appealing piece that offers plenty to enjoy. With clearer audience participation and a stronger dramaturgical thread connecting its many appealing elements, it could soar even higher.

Director: Ria Ashcroft
Associate Director: Hannah Stone
Designer: Hannah Boothman
Music and Lyrics: Darren Clark
Additional Music and Lyrics: Inês Sampaio Figueiredo
Lighting Designer: Arnim Friess
Dramaturg: Tilly Branson
Stage Manager: Aliya Edwards
Choreographer: Sarah Butler
Aerial Consultant: Sarah Bebe Holmes
Early years Consultant: Sarah Argent

Take Flight has finished its run at Grand Junction; the tour continues across the country until 5 July, ending at Polka Theatre.