Out one day with his parents in the mountains, Albert climbs to the highest peak above the clouds, trips, falls off and is saved by the children who live in the clouds. Travelling Light's latest show, based on John Burningham's picture book is a real delight for the very young. It is a reminder that drama for the under-fives is one of the most inventive areas in British theatre today, helping to rescue the medium from the limitations of the merely text-based.
This show is of particular interest because not only is it pitched just right for its young audience, but it also works on many levels, conscious and unconscious. It has most in common with an Improbable Theatre Company show of a few years back called Coma. This is a story that can be taken at face value, but which is also as an exploration of a near-death experience, in which Albert falls, goes to paradise, meets God (in this instance the Queen) and is eventually restored to his parents through the repetition of "magic" words. Katie Sykes' design evokes this dream state very well.
Your average four-year-old, of course, is not going to look at it this way at all, and they don't need too. They will simply enjoy the puppetry, music, clever physical work and a world that is blue-white as ice but somehow very snuggly and safe. But there is a particularly artful simplicity at work here: the physical work reminds you of that sense of falling that you sometimes get as you go to sleep, and Stu Baker's music suggests something stranger going on beneath its surface jolity.
Like all really good theatre, the show is both what it seems and something more, unsophisticated and very sophisticated at the same time. It takes real skill and guts to produce work for children like this. As ever, Travelling Light remain one of the unsung heroes of theatre today.
· Until October 11. Box office: 0117-987 7877. Then touring. Info: 0117-377 3166 or info@travlight.co.uk, <A HREF="http://www.travlight.co.uk" www.travlight.co.uk
