Review: SeedHeart, Pleasance Courtyard (Below)

Trapped within a glass jar, a small grey puppet struggles to escape. Our host, Anna Ingleby, encourages the audience to question how he – Grey by name – came to be in such a precarious situation and explains his tale in SeedHeart. This charming suitcase production by Indigo Moon deals with the simple correlation between actions and consequences. 

Grey finds a seed and plants it. He’s delighted when it grows into a tree but then loses his way, ripping out the surrounding forest to make space for a house and subsequent building work. This leads to intense urban development which of course means that the natural world is damaged and everyone suffers. 

Ingleby is a delightful solo performer, who engages with the children in a friendly manner. An excellent storyteller, she reveals the tale in layers using paper theatre and a variety of puppetry techniques, largely drawn from within the case, along with entertaining verbal sound effects. It begins rather beautifully, with the delightful marionette in a jar and magical music accompaniment. 

Having been introduced early on, Grey is then absent for a section in the middle of the show where children are invited to interact, playing the role of lab assistants who create ‘Island of Dr Moreau’ mashup creatures. It allows them to become active in imagining a different, distorted future world, albeit where the fun is in creating mutations. The section feels a little grafted in itself, in quite a different style to the earlier part of the show, although welcomed by the audience who were keen to get involved. The character of Grey then only returns briefly to close the show, which is a shame as he adds a pure, human essence to the story and it shines when he returns. 

It’s in the puppetry that the quality of the show truly lies, including use of marionette, rod puppetry, shadow and paper play. These and the snipped out set design are beautifully crafted, with these traditional artforms celebrating the value of careful construction, as opposed to the exploitation of the land recognised in big business and capitalist greed. 

There’s much to like in this production, including great storytelling, imaginative puppetry and child-friendly interaction, and it ends with Grey coming to understand what happens if you don’t look after the natural world. That’s surely a great message to be planted and nurtured.  

Producer: Indigo Moon 
Directors: Steve Tiplady & Haviel Perdana 
Original Music: Haviel Perdana 
Scenery: Haviel Perdana & Anna Ingleby 
Main character adapted from: 3D-printed puppets by Nik Palmer 

SeedHeart is aimed at ages 5+ and plays at Pleasance Courtyard (Below) until Monday 31 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.