Review: O Human Child

Entering a theatre normally means stepping over knees to find your seat, awkwardly peeling off your coat, and searching the stage or programme for clues as to what’s in store – not so in ‘O Human Child’.

Its audience has no time for mental preparation before being ushered into a dimly lit ‘enchanted forest’ full of writhing, giggling, stamping, chanting fairies who hand out masks and torches.

The set design is imaginative: curtains hang down like vines and you’re free to eat the fruit (which is pressed upon you by insistent fairies anyway). Twigs and leaves cover the floor. The sound effects are spooky and well-timed to fit with action on the stage: the total effect is very immersive.

But the whole thing could have been still more awkward. Inspired by elements of ‘punch drunk’ theatre, ‘O Human Child’ asks its audience to roam around and discover the action on its own.

Fortunately the nervous audience was met with energetic actors committed to their roles. Direct eye contact and limb stroking are among the weapons in their arsenal, which they employ to engage (and embarrass) their audience.

The cast also use physical theatre techniques excellently – especially when portraying the twisted effects of magic. The fairyland is malicious. When Titania falls for a mortal man, her girlish enthusiasm is at first made dark by her total physical control of him.

But although the actors are tightly choreographed, the production itself is chaotic. Its script draws from Shakespeare (‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’), Rossetti (‘Goblin Market’), Yeats and Keats, a literary mix drawn straight from A level English lessons.

Without the set ‘O Human Child’ might have looked more like an English class acting out their favourite scenes than anything else.

You do get the sense that cohesion isn’t the point – but once the atmosphere’s novelty wears off, the story breaks down and begins to drag. The lack of a plot that isn’t cut-down Shakespeare and Yeats is the problem but as a production it’s certainly different and enthusiastic about it.

At the least go for the free fruit, or to say you’ve been.