EDINBURGH 2014 - BWW Reviews: HUMAN CHILD, Underbelly, August 3 2014

This was not the tale I had bargained for. Human Child is a children's show that promises magical storytelling with the use of music and puppets. However, it was a lot darker than I expected.

Leila is having a hard time. She prefers the company of her imaginary rat friend Harry to other children in the playground. Her father doesn't seem to understand her and she gets into a lot of trouble at school for her fantasist behaviour. She is summoned to another world by fairies, a place where they can play the games that Leila wants to play all of the time.

This is when the plot takes an unexpected turn. A condition of staying to play with the fairies means that she must send a changeling in her place back to the real world so that nobody reports her missing. Once the changeling takes over her life in the human world, there is no going back. The concept is delivered via gentle ukelele music and bright colours which means there is nothing that the young audience would deem too scary - apart from the changeling puppet which might give me nightmares for a few weeks.

The play draws to a happy conclusion and there are some brilliantly original ideas in this piece. The storytelling is very inventive and original. The cast of four perform as a multitude of characters and it is obvious that a lot of work has gone into the show.

Human Child runs at the Underbelly at 12.50pm until August 24th.

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