When playful bakers Bun and Bap turn up for work there is soon a big mess in the kitchen. Squeezed, squidged and flumped, the dough is transformed into hearts, snakes, funny faces and even a bread baby whose adventures with Springy Thing-a puppet constructed from kitchen implements-provides the main action of this happy, expertly executed little show for the under-sixes. At the end we all get to eat the little bread rolls that are baked on stage for the duration of the performance. Now that is what I call theatrically nourishing.
Theatre for the very young has been one of the most inventive, ground-breaking and least documented areas of British theatre over the last decade, and Oily Cart has been one of a handful of companies in the forefront of this imaginative revolution. At their very best Oily Cart can give some of the great companies such as Complicite and Improbable a run for their money. But entertaining and clever though it is, this little show isn't an example of the company at full stretch. For all its many technical accomplishments and transforming puppetry, it lacks the emotional and mythical dimension of some previous work, or even its multi-sensory approach-the oven doesn't allow for the smell of baking bread to permeate the theatre. In the end this is very superior Play School fare.
That said, it is done with enormous charm, and there are some lovely moments including a flour snow storm as Bread Baby and Springy Thing flee with the Yeast Monster Blob in hot pursuit, and a touching first meeting between Bread Baby and Bread Mummy. A case of a genuine yummy mummy if ever there was one.
· At Lyric Hammersmith February 17-21, and at Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells February 24-28.
