Review: KINDER, Little Angel Theatre

Innovative puppet theatre company Smoking Apples don’t do things by halves. Based on the events of the Czech Kindertransport, the award-winning Kinder is a work which stands as an important testament to both how terrible and wonderful humans can be to each other.

The recent work by co-directors Molly Freeman, Matt Lloyd and Hattie Thomas has delved into various aspects of the natural world: Arbor The Tree has a 17-foot central character while Buzz is about Billy Bumble who shrinks down to bee-size. Like them, Kinder (co-devised with George Bellamy and David Burchhardt) is highly kinetic with skilful puppetry amplified by mature and heart-felt acting.

The story of the Kindertransport and Nicholas Winton is well known. Or, at least, it should be. In 1938, on the eve of the Second World War, a small team led by Winton managed to smuggle 669 Jewish children out of Czechoslovakia by train through Nazi Germany and the Netherlands to Britain. Almost as incredible as these heroics is that these events went unheralded for half a century with the public only knowing about them in the late Eighties.

Kinder is not a history lesson, though. The time and place are used as a framework to explore how one child called Babi came to England and, much later with her grandson, made her journey back to the city she left.  

Matt Lloyd’s set is ostensibly a large box inside which a small audience sits, albeit with many bells and whistles that reveal themselves as we go. Around us, maps move the action through Europe, windows open and close, shutters flap up and down and projections light up. Behind the walls, a crunchy sound design and emotional music pull us into each scene, creating heart-tugging tension with casual ease Alongside “much-anticipated”, “immersive theatre” may be one of the most overused and abused phrases around but Lloyd’s 360-degree set does a marvellous job of dropping us into the drama.

We first meet Babi as a young girl. Wearing a Star of David around her neck given to her by her father, we witness her travelling with a suitcase containing the bare minimum - including some cake, shoes and a book - things veer on the claustrophobic when the train stops at a station in Germany. From behind us, a guard shouts for papers and, like Babi, we recoil and we shrink. The heart-grabbing moment turns into sheer torture as we watch the poor girl root through her suitcase presenting everything but papers to the increasingly belligerent official. Theatre doesn’t get much more intense than this.

This is not to say that this kiddy-friendly show is all Schindler’s List-style darkness. There are plenty of light-hearted moments as we watch Babi make a cake or trundle around Prague with her phone-addicted grandson. A very friendly puppet dog pops up to friendly molest the audience and there are many touching scenes between Babi and her English foster mother Margaret. The latter half of Kinder is a paean of sorts to simpler times - not just from England’s past but from our own pasts too -  when an afternoon spent making a cake or sitting by the sea with some chips were the stuff happy memories were made of.

There are also some lovely touches which bring home what it was like for Babi to be a stranger in a strange land. Margaret is represented by just a pair of very long legs next to her young charge. Thomas uses endearing movements to bring both the young refugee and her elder self to life. Language is also a key component here with Freeman and Bellamy’s script containing a mixture of Czech and English; when Babi first hears the latter, it is deliberately smooshed and rough around the edges and becomes clearer over time as we see her own English skills develop.

Family-friendly shows like this can serve and do deserve the widest audience and, despite its dark material, it edifies and satisfies without dumbing down or skirting the emotional impact of the situations they depict. In a fast-moving hour, Kinder delivers a brilliant blend of clever storytelling and smart theatre which is suitable for children and essential for adults.

Kinder continues at Little Angel Theatre until 3 September.

Photo credit: Smoking Apples

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