Theatre reviews: Double You | The Pale Baron | When The World Turns

Flanders is in the spotlight at the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival, writes Joyce McMillan

Double You, Portobello Town Hall ★★★★★

The Pale Baron, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★★

When The World Turns, Lyra Theatre, Craigmillar ★★★★

The Flanders region of Belgium is legendary for the brilliance and daring of its theatre work for young audiences; hence the four-show Spotlight On Flanders season that featured in this year’s Edinburgh International Children’s Festival.

And of all those fine shows, the one that played at Portobello Town Hall over the weekend – Double You, by Be Flat theatre of Ghent – turned out to be the absolute star, an unmissable and breathtaking hour of circus and physical theatre that had a Saturday night family audience cheering and stamping their approval.

Double You PIC: Dainius Putinas

Performed by a team of five superbly strong, and athletic men in their 30s and 40s, Double You begins by defying two theatrical conventions. The first says that teams of acrobats should look as neatly identical as possible, submerging their own personalities; whereas this show begins with a long and teasing parade of individual appearances from the five hugely varied performers, each eyeballing the audience in his own inimitable way.

And the second convention says that one show generally has just one audience. Here, the audience is divided in two by a huge white sheet across the stage, with evidently different things happening on either side. And that, again, provokes another divide, between those who are happy to watch their side of the show, and those who can’t stop wondering what’s happening over there; until at last, in a fine moment of theatrical madness, the curtain falls, and the audience joyfully becomes one.

And from that point, the physical energy of the show almost literally goes through the roof, in ever more fabulous and breathtaking combinations of sound, music and movement. Themes and ideas flit through the mind – about unity and division, about othering and ceasing to other, about the astounding strength of human beings acting together, and about brilliant male role models for a century when we learn to play creatively, and to value that play, or we die. Mostly, though, we are just having a wonderful time; and feeling fortunate that we were there, to see this fantastic company performing at the height of their powers.

The Pale Baron PIC: Phile Deprez

Also hugely impressive, from Flanders, was Kopergietery’s challenging show The Pale Baron, at the Traverse, in which Anna Vercammen and Joeri Cnapelinckx play Felkla and Felix, a pair of songwriter-musician working together in a place called The Underwater State. The state – like its great leader, The Pale Baron – values nothing but obvious usefulness, and hates artists and poets. Worse, it blames those not born in the State for everything; and Felka did arrive there, long ago, as a refugee.

The contemporary resonances of the show are all too obvious, in other words. And Vercammen and Cnapelinckx’s performance, as the shades of oppression close around them, is both all too credible, and punctuated by some truly brilliant rock music; in a show that may be a tad complex and inconclusive for some in the target audience of 8-14 year olds, but that seems vitally important for young teenagers growing up in today’s increasingly authoritarian world.

And there’s just time, as the EICF 2025 curtain falls, to play tribute to English company Oily Cart’s show When The World Turns, co-created with the Australian group Polyglot, and presented at Lyra in Craigmillar last week. Specially crafted for children with physical and leaning disabilities, the show leads us into a canopied pavilion transformed into a small indoor rain forest, full of rich green plants, forest sounds, and telling lighting effects, as we see our own bodies merge – at least in shadow-play – into the texture of the forest itself.

It’s an award-winning show, and justly so; a gem of an experience for youngsters with special needs, and reminder to all of us that when we humans talk about the natural world, we are also talking about ourselves, and our own capacity to survive and thrive.

All runs completed

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