“Why does everyone say I’m trouble, just because I’m loud and excited?” says Eleanor Sutton as Chatterbox Charli after creating a stir in the classroom. It’s a problem any child can recognise. How to express yourself in a way that feels true when the adult world just wants to tame you?
In Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s play, Charli has more energy than good sense, but next to Nathan Queeley-Dennis’s Milo, a well-meaning geek rather too keen to play by the rules, she is the one you want to side with.
Hampered doubly by Leah St Luce, who plays her mother and teacher, she can’t put a foot right, despite her ambition to be voted school president. It’s not that she’s trying to be subversive: she just doesn’t want to be reined in.
The family show takes a fairytale twist when, after losing her voice, Charli solicits the help of the animals in a zoo. St Luce and Queeley-Dennis gamely play everything from a rhino to a fly in the quest for Charli’s voice to be heard once more.
Really Big and Really Loud is directed with fizz and focus by Katie Posner in the Paines Plough Roundabout tent, here under the auspices of Newcastle’s Northern Stage towards the start of a UK tour. Kitted out by designer Lydia Denno in shades of pink, purple and yellow to complement our seat cushions, the three actors give warm and committed performances, allowing Charli’s dilemma due weight.
If Eclair-Powell overloads the themes, including an unexplored suggestion of Charli’s mother’s depression and a late-developing idea that the girl’s exuberance is a front for her fear, it is no less lively a piece of storytelling theatre about the fine art of socialisation.
Really Big and Really Loud is on tour until 17 October.
