The PaperBoats. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 26 Aug 2022
There’s nothing simpler than a kindy kid happily playing with a tennis ball.
But playing with a tennis ball and sharing it, is a different thing!
The Boy and a Ball is the most subtle, low tech, magical and highly intelligent engagement of a captive kindergarten audience you could want.
Performer Stephen Noonan created this work under the dramaturgical support and direction of Dave Brown. It is a masterpiece in exploring the subtle niceties, insecurities and joys of play, making friends and sheer magic. Dave Brown’s direction is most subtle, effective and unobtrusive.
Greg Cousins’ design of a cardboard cylinder fort of varying cylindrical sizes and James Brown’s wonderfully eclectic soundscape offer Noonan all he needs to play a soft, shy, gentle childlike human who slowly but surely makes friends with the audience and enjoys adventures with highly engaged, animated and loud commentary making kids.
The fort of cylinders is in itself magic. It can become a container, a torch, a magic trick. A means of shared play with a chosen kid happy to engage as the tennis ball is flipped back and forth.
The mastery of this work is its delicacy and respect for its young audience, their capacity to respond to it and be rewarded in that response by what happens before them by a supremely aware performer in Noonan.
David O’Brien
When: Closed
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: Closed
