Will-o'-the-wisp French-style visual theatre has caught flame in Ireland in recent years. Notable companies include Blue Raincoats in Sligo, and now the Belfast company Kabosh, who bring this wordless, illusionist, beautifully tasteful little show.
On a dimly lit stage, four young movement-trained actors in shimmery autumnal pyjamas play jack-in-the-box through Gary McCann's geometric set, made up of slope-roofed De Chirico-style building blocks that double as Narnia wardrobes.
Time passes through a dreamy, evocative series of routines. There are breathtaking images of wonderstruck children, waking with a start or sinking back into sleep, clambering rooftops in their dreams or venturing out into a hostile city. Occasionally one breaks from the huddle to gaze romantically up, before joining the others in a mad sequence involving darkened trapdoors.
Much of it depends on visual tricks, some as old as the hills, but freshly deployed for the most part: torches shone at the audience, which then move high and far apart; the inevitable dance routine with a whirling umbrella; or the conceit of the guy suspended from a tiny helium balloon.
All is preserved in the atmosphere of John Dunne's rich score; some of it electronic minimalism; more of it acoustically arranged with soloists and musicians from the Irish Chamber Choir. There are warming progressions of piano chords, playful cabaret tropes, and a jagged, elegaic violin.
The company is impressive and assured, having arrived at such complex, ambitious physical performance and production values. But this tale - purportedly about a "golden" girl-child at a moment of choice between staying with the pack or going it alone - goes no further than wistfully peeping beneath the canopy of re-remembered childhood. Eventually director Karl Wallace, working with choreographer Rachel O'Riordan, seems to run out of trickster's steam.
The pleasures and mysteries of reading are constantly emphasised in Kabosh's new storybook world, with its very established visual aesthetic. But suggestive as it often is, the actors, despite their strong presence and solo routines, rarely inflate into recognisable characters or events.
Even so, the children in the audience - some sprawled on cast-iron cots, self-consciously inset into the front row - were absorbing it all curiously, even cackling at every odd piece of throwaway clowning.
