Festival review: The Girl With No Heart; Bedlam Theatre (venue 49)

What starts off as a seemingly whimsical modern fairytale develops into something much bleaker in this imaginative mix of life-sized puppets, shadow work and vivid lighting that is an analogy for children’s experiences of war and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While this might not be immediately obvious, the programme clarifies things and the survivors’ testimonies in it are more moving than anything that happens on stage which, beautiful as it is, can sometimes feel a bit oblique.

A young girl travels from a utopian world, where evil can be wished away and death is unheard of, to a place of war and destruction where the opposite applies. There are some evocative moments of visual storytelling – the flaking ash of the shell-shocked landscape, a failed journey aboard a giant paper crane, the innovative puppets, and beautiful paper set – but less developed is the protagonist; a chipper but rather stilted every-heroine. While the other characters carry their hearts, hers is hidden.

It’s a nice idea, but, along with many others, needs more clarity to achieve the emotional punch the subject matter warrants.

Rating; ***
Until 25 August. Tomorrow 5pm.