Theatre review: The Bird Show
Elizabeth Nicholls reviews The Bird Show, performed at the Wardrobe Theatre on Sunday 4 August.
My four-year-old son and I went to the Wardrobe Theatre on Sunday 4 August to watch The Bird Show, a flap-tastic fact-filled family comedy by The Last Baguette.
The play tells the story of two very different birds, brought together by a common need to find food in a polluted world.
Henry the Heron believes he used to live by a river in the countryside and Sally the Sparrow claims she’s always lived on the dump. The pair have become accustomed to foraging through the bins, they are reliant on the wasteful humans, but when the humans change their ways and clean up the countryside the pair must remember their heritage and learn how to hunt for organic grub just like their ancestors.
This play was obviously well researched and the physical movements are perfectly bird-like. I feel as though their story could be playing in real time at the bottom of my garden any day of the week.
The set, designed by Bronia Housman, is made almost entirely from recycled materials with some clever tricks used to help it magically transform when the dump is reclaimed by nature and the river begins to flow again.
Comical songs and mesmerising puppetry blend with facts and jokes to create a thought-provoking, touching piece of theatre about conservation, migration and imagination.
To see what else is coming up at The Wardrobe Theatre, visit thewardrobetheatre.com.
