Wharf 2 Theatre, September 21
8.5/10
The magic lies in the mystery. No one – especially children – has to understand all that happens in a story to delight in it. The parts that leave you guessing can often be the best bits. So not only is your brain fully engaged by Cicada, but so is the full panoply of emotions, including that fascinating one which beauty triggers: an ephemeral mixture of wonder and sadness, which we’re made to feel time and again.
Shaun Tan’s award-winning children’s book mythologises the 17 years that some cicada species live underground in their nymph phase, before bursting forth to shed their skins, take to the air, drum up a racket, and enthusiastically mate. For the underground 17 years, Tan has his hero working at a desk job in the basement of an office building, taking no sick days and making no mistakes, but, in a human-centric workplace, he receives endless vilification and bullying rather than promotion.
This luminous adaption was written by Barking Gecko Theatre’s Luke Kerridge (who also directs it), Arielle Gray and Tim Watts (who perform it, with Watts also responsible for the video design). They’ve taken Tan’s striking and somewhat disturbing graphic world, and realised it with just a desk, a simple cicada puppet (voiced and operated by Watts) and some headless, two-dimensional humans (voiced and operated by Gray). Ingenious use of props, video, lighting and music compound a theatrical experience that would already be enchanting were Watts just “being” his cicada.
The full scope of Tan’s story has been captured (and even expanded – perhaps just at trifle too much). Firstly, for all the many ways in which humanity abuses him, Cicada copes with a ready cheerfulness that is the flesh on the spine of his stoicism and resilience, and a catalyst for abundant humour. More importantly, the book’s mystery is not lost. The creature’s lifecycle has parallels with reincarnation and resurrection, and Cicada’s malignant treatment by the humans could a metaphor for all sorts of “othered” groups, but nothing is overt. With nothing is explained, the play will generate that most priceless of family interactions: conversation.
You enter the theatre in a state of curiosity as to how a 28-page picture book becomes a 55-minute play, and you walk out enriched, moved, happier and in a state of lingering wonder.
Until October 13.