Flyboy is exactly that: half-boy, half-fly. He lives in a small English village – and he's not the only mutant there. His best friend is Mothboy, who Flyboy clearly loves. At the zoo, Mothboy stares at the elephants, and Flyboy gazes at Mothboy. Flyboy has been abandoned by his parents, but plenty of people seem to drop by, including Nosferatu, the devil and a robot in need of a heart.
Matthew Robins's charming, sometimes heartbreaking little stories are delivered as adult shadow-puppet operas, comprising homemade cardboard figures and sets, and accompanied by a superb eight-piece band. They create a complete world, one that's full of loss and unrequited love, but with a surreal and occasionally snappy humour. A log, crowned king of the forest, bursts into flames during a firework celebration in his honour; a frozen wolf, taken home by a woman who thinks the creature's a statue, thaws with unfortunate consequences. The whole thing feels like watching a silent movie in which every aspect has been created by a wayward child genius.
Sadly, the Barbican hasn't thought hard enough about how to present the evening. As an 80-minute cabaret-style performance with tables and wine, this would be a quirky delight; but, at two and a quarter hours in a theatre, the charm palls, despite the chance to make your own dinosaur shadow puppet. Robins is clearly massively talented and a little mad in the nicest way, and maybe he just wants to do what he does, which is fine. But if the work is going to move into a theatre sphere, then – like Paper Cinema and 1927, who also work with shadow animation – it needs support and collaboration to find a wider and more extended theatrical language.
