Cloudland

Bristol Old Vic

Three stars

One day a young boy called Albert falls off a mountain. But instead of crashing to an untimely death, he is rescued by the magic of the floaty-light Cloud Children, who take him off to a land in the clouds to paint with rainbows and dance amidst thunderstorms. The rich leaps of fantasy and the vivid illustrations in John Burningham's book Cloudland have made it a firm favourite with pre-schooolers. And now award-winning kids' theatre company Travelling Light bring it to the stage, with a very low budget set consisting of little more than a couple of stepladders, some pillows and a parachute. Travelling light indeed!

Three actors and a musician combine songs, puppetry, dance and physical theatre to perform a story which is as whispy and ethereal as cirrus. In some ways, it seems that there is not enough here to sustain a whole performance: yet just as the apparently insubstantial clouds bears Albert's weight, so the flimsy structure of Burningham's story supports nearly an hour of engaging performance. The presentation switches between puppets and adult actors to represent the various characters, allowing them to break free from the bonds of gravity whilst also offering the life-sized substantiality of flesh and blood when it is more appropriate. Hence lengths of white muslin are transformed into the contrails of a passing jet along which a puppet Albert walks high above the earth, but the Cloud Children wrap full-size Albert in a swaddling of white bedding to create a nest which looks as comfortable and inviting as one would imagine a cloud to be. The end result is a dream-like fantasy of life in the upper atmosphere which flickers and reshapes itself constantly - a bit like cumulus clouds scudding overhead on a summer's day. It may be feather-light, but it is the perfect confection to hold the flyway attention of the under-sixes who make up the target audience.

If there is a flaw, it is that the dramatisation blurs the bittersweet ending of Burningham's book, in which Albert is granted his wish and returned to his parents' loving embrace, but then spends the rest of his life trying to remember the magic incantation that will return him to Cloudland. The adaptation therefore obscures Burningham's acknowledgement of the fact that, even for kids, choices involve sacrifices and decisions have costs as well as benefits. But maybe children's theatre fulfils a different role from children's literature. As a child's first encounter with the magic of the stage, perhaps it need not provoke thought or prompt recognition so much as simply ensure that the audience come out, like my three year old daughter did, with shining eyes, stimulated imaginations and the seeds of a love of theatre sown in their hearts. This production of Cloudland will certainly do that.

Toby O'Connor Morse

Touring across the country until 28 February 2004.

Details at www.travlight.co.uk