Oily Cart Theatre Company has spent much of the last decade creating performances for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties. This has taught the company how to turn uninspired spaces into magical environments and given them a remarkably rich theatrical vocabulary in which all the senses are celebrated and text is only one component in the development of meaning, emotion and narrative.
Now the idea has been extended to a more general audience. Knock! Knock! Who's There? is a touchy-feely, scratch-and-sniff, storytelling performance for the under-fives and their carers. It is a total delight and I can't wait until Oily Cart get round to doing shows for the over-30s. It is not often that theatre makes you feel blissed out. But this miniature does, in part because the audience - small though it is in every way - is made to feel an active participant.
First you are offered a flowered apron and hat, and then ushered into an indoors autumnal garden that is like a glorious playground of the senses. Topiary sits side by side with a pop-up scarecrow, rows of chattering crows, a watering can that spills its contents over plump, red chillies, a large swinging sofa on which to dream, and baskets of lavender and vanilla pods that you can dip your fingers into and sniff. The ground is covered with fallen leaves.
Our guide is the friendly Ruby Onions, who shows us inside the garden shed where animals and plants are hibernating for the winter. After the jollity of the garden, this is another enchanted environment, a place of shadows and light and warmth where wide-awake potatoes have to be soothed back to sleep with a lullaby and apples in basket cots with duvets and pillows demand a bedtime story.
That's exactly what we get with a little help from Ruby's friends, Sunny, with his mane of red hair and gold waistcoat, and Dewdrop. There are potentially six different stories on offer, from the tale of the potato Cinderella to the one we heard about the mole and his hole. I say heard, but that's not strictly correct - one of the great joys of this performance is that it makes you feel that you are part of the story and that you've dug a mole hole yourself.
This is, of course, the very simplest kind of theatre. But it recognises something that so much theatre for adults appears to have forgotten - that the word play means just that. This is a world of dressing up, dazzling jewel-like colours, cosy moments and the myriad possibilities of "let's pretend". It is a wonderfully imaginative work and a springboard for young imaginations.
It is also completely free for performances at London's Royal Festival Hall over Christmas, which must be the seasonal gift of the year. But tickets must be booked in advance. Do not delay.
At the Royal Festival Hall, London SE1 (020-7960 4225), from December 20 to January 7.
