Looking for Yoghurt does not, as the title might suggest, involve a raid on the fridge, but is an ambitious piece of trilingual children's theatre developed by Birmingham Rep with Joyful and Hanyong Theatres in South Korea and Kijimuna Festa from Japan.
Norang is a young Korean girl who has lost a cat called Yoghurt. Ignoring the warning signs, she strays on to a construction site where she encounters two new friends: English-speaking Blue, who has built a command centre out of plastic crates; and Aka, a would-be Japanese superhero intent on saving the world with a coat hanger.
Whether it's a good idea to encourage children to play on building sites is a moot point in any language, but despite the lack of a common tongue the trio set to work with an earth-mover to dig a hole to Brazil. The cat ends up out of reach and, as the children build a precarious tower to rescue it, you wonder if it might not be quicker to give the British, Japanese and Korean fire services a call.
The three performers, Young Ju Park, Yudai Kano and Daniel Naddafy, are all highly engaging, and there's evocative accompaniment from Japanese percussionist Ayako Kaihatsu. The show is an effective demonstration of the international lingua franca of the imagination, but there's a distinction between playing and acting that Peter Wynne-Willson's production doesn't always observe. And while you absorb more Japanese and Korean than you might have thought possible, the narrative is simplified to the point where you wonder if the six-plus age designation might be more productively revised to six-and-below.
