A trip to London‘s first address for puppetry has long been overdue, and my first visit to The Little Angel Theatre actually leads me a few steps down the road to its satellite, the Little Angel Studios, proudly hosting the last show of this summer’s Children’s Puppet Festival. Offie winner Kinder by Smoking Apples, a company focussing on puppetry and visual theatre, plays here for the remaining festival morning, afternoons and evenings. In a cubic space hosting 8×4 seats, there is lots to see before the show starts: Travel posters, maps and luggage tags on the walls, windows and doors in all directions, buttons to press and even a model train set. There are train announcements and shadow plays, and no one will leave without being involved at least not a tiny bit – you might catch some sweets, be greeted by an audience-loving dog or help to bake a cake.
An elderly lady and her smartphone-addicted grandson are taking the train to Prague: Flashbacks haunt her of when she first left the Czech capital during the second world war, sent away all by herself as only a little girl by her Jewish, well-meaning parents, in hope that she would avoid the bombings. Scenes of shadow play tell about the crimes of the November pogroms in 1938 (carefully tailored to the understandings of 9-year-olds this play is aimed at), acoustically accompanied by audio snippets from The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive. Everything little Babi has with her fits in a little suitcase, empty enough to accept a single shoe from a gentleman called Nick she meets at Prague’s main train station just before departure.
Inevitably, the train drives first through Germany and during a stop in Waidstadt, Babi is meeting kind local citizens, quickly followed by threatening confrontations with Nazi officers checking her papers (legends of their ravenous appetite for cake turning those in brown uniforms into thieves run in many continental families it seems – and maybe they are indeed more often shared with small children than their other crimes against humanity). But in both scenarios, both lived through from the same seat in the same train at the same platform, Babi does not understand a word and has no way of explaining herself. The German used is neither correct nor native but scary in any case. A lot of Czech, German, Dutch and English in various accents are crammed into a single hour without any translations, sub- or surtitles, all proving Babi’s helplessness, confusion, fear and loneliness painfully – while also illustrating how unique Europe and its various cultures are, and the little wonder that many can be experienced from one single train in times much more peaceful.
Once arrived in England at the Kentish coastal town of Margate, Babi is forced to take her host’s surname as cane-wielding teacher won’t bother with foreign gibberish surnames; eventually Babi is getting used to fish ‘n chips, Marmite and British Christmas while practicing English with the milk man. The memories of her early life in Czechoslovakia and the community having raised her so far, fade, and it seems like many memories are only coming back when she finally returns many decades later, especially when facing the statue there of a certain Sir Nicholas Winton at the very platform she once departed…
Kinder is a beautiful, magical play which brings as many laughs as tears. To think that children from Germany’s major cities were routed to what is now the Czech Republic to save them from bombings while Czech children were moved from their country for almost the same reason, is something which will have me thinking for a long, long time. There is no glamorisation of war here, just the urgent reminder on how devastatingly it is to those it affects most. Every award this production has won so far is well deserved – may many follow.
**** out of 5 stars
Script by Molly Freeman and George Bellamy, directed by Molly Freeman
Performed by Hattie Thomas, David Burchhardt and Tea Poldervaart
After its run at the Little Angel Theatre (tickets from £12), a national tour of Kinder followed and continues in 2024.
Sadie takes the Stage 