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Southbank Centre, London
Origami meets theatre in Rip, Fold, Scrunch, a fantasy played out in a white world where paper falls from umbrellas like snow and can be transformed into a hat, a fan, a kite or even a baby. Three performers – a singer, a Kathak-trained dancer and a cellist – play with paper, wafting it with their hands or their breath, and transforming it into picture frames or butterflies. I could not help thinking that they are having a better time than the audience.
This touring show from the normally pioneering Half Moon theatre company is gently charming, but often feels like a classroom speculation on the properties of paper rather than a fully fledged imaginative experience; it does not get much beyond illustrating the fact that you can do an amazing number of different things with a piece of paper in 45 minutes if you really put your mind to it. Small children were clearly itching to do rather than just watch. So was I. The little girl who picked up a discarded cone of paper and pretended to lick it while announcing "I've got an ice cream" was way ahead of the theatrical game.
Indeed, seldom has an audience shown such a flagrant disregard for the fourth wall; then again, when most of them are under five, they are not inhibited by theatre convention. The increasing tendency as the performance progressed for the toddlers to storm the stage highlighted the dramaturgical failings of this devised piece. It did finally grant its young audience an official opportunity to play with the paper, but far too late in the proceedings, as they had already made inroads on the set. In an era when many artists are making theatre with audiences rather than for them, this show seemed strangely dated.
