Punchdrunk are famous for allowing audience members to go on individual journeys through strange places. Their new show, co-produced with this excellent museum and aimed at six-to-12-year-olds and their families, is inevitably more regulated. But, while both my nine-year-old grandson and I had a perfectly pleasant time, the 50-minute experience feels as much like a teaching tool as a journey into uncharted waters.
The event starts with the audience donning lifejackets and being divided into a crew made up of navigators, midshipmen, ship’s watch and salvage. Yet, for all the attempts to get us to pretend that we are on board the HMS Adventure, we soon realise that we have been escorted into the bowels of the museum. Under the guidance of two curators, convincingly played, when I saw the show, by Michael Cusick and Lowri James, we are asked to inspect a number of objects encased in a wooden mast. They include a sextant, a ship’s bottle, Grace Darling’s telescope and Drake’s drumsticks and, when they mysteriously disappear, we go on a quest in search of them.
In an adult Punchdrunk show, we would pursue our own paths but, since this is a family affair, our route is preordained. Admittedly, Simon Davies’s script injects a bit of drama into the search by pretending there is a severe time limit for the restoration of the objects to the museum’s storehouse. I can see the point of that, but it rather restricts our chance to poke around among the dusty rooms filled, in Livi Vaughan’s design, with nautical bric-a-brac.
The show is at its best when most interactive. In one room, where we were searching for the missing sextant, I made a fool of myself by claiming to have found it under a crumpled heap of maps. What I’d actually discovered was a miniature sundial which, although of use later, proved I should have been paying more attention.
What the show, directed by Peter Higgin and Katy Balfour, needs is a greater sense of danger. Children can stand more physical menace than they are offered here and, although there is a climactic attempt to create a sense of urgency, I doubt it will fool many of the audience. The end result is an event that heightens our awareness of maritime objects and their history, gets us to play hunt-the-symbol and induces us to visit the museum itself. All that is admirable. The eternal child in me, however, craved a tiny bit more adventure.
• At National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, until 31 August.
