"Lose The Path, Find Your Way" by Cracking Slate.

Nottingham Playhouse

Neville Studios.

There's something really nice about children's theatre that aims to get children to think for themselves as well as educating them in such a way that, to them, feels more like playing and enjoying themselves than being educated. This piece of theatre does exactly that.

Sam (Adi Roy Bhattacharya) is lost in a forest after losing his football and is searching for the right path when he stumbles across Akir (Lily Bailes) and Malaya (Rose Charmaine Camacho), who offer to show him the way back. But as the shadowy shape shifting, spiny backed creature chasing them closes in, Sam will have to make a choice, escape the forest and go home or save his friends and risk being trapped forever. It's at this stage that the script ends and the actors don’t know what to do next. It is then the job of the audience to come up with the next parts of the story and help Sam escape the shape shifter and find their way home and to safety.

Created and produced by Josh Lewis, himself a local actor and writer, who set up Cracking Slate in London, which specialises in touring participatory theatrical experiences for young people. They put adventure, play and creativity at the heart of everything they do. They want to empower young people to become the directors of their own story, supporting them to dive into their imagination and work together to express themselves and their own ideas. 

The show is aimed at 9 - 11 year olds and their families but there's no real age limit, as this evening proved because the adults became just as involved in the show as the young ones. 

It's a credit to the skills of all three actors in their storytelling and their confidence boosts that make the children in the audience readily volunteer vocally as well as physically.

The puppetry is wonderful to see and you can see the quality of these puppets; from the intricate smaller mannequin style puppets to the large puppets that quite rightly send shivers down the spine, especially the wolf like creature with the blazing eyes. These puppets were made by Yunshu Jiang, Izzy Jiang and Edd Berrdidge.

The set design by Mikayla Teodoro gave the feel of a fantasy forest, especially with the movable pieces which created the shape shifting forest design, and which in the end scene all fitted together to make the escape scene section of mountains and rivers, painted by Tessa Bentley to give an animated effect, visually, and the larger mobile wooden pieces of scenery credited to Josh Hill.

Directed by Emily Catherine Haldane, and like Josh, has a grasp on what makes a brilliant and enchanting piece of theatre for young children, therefore keeping everything tight and fast moving, making sure that the attention is held throughout, giving the children something to concentrate on and take part in all the way through.

Music also plays a big part, especially in theatre for the young, and the execution of the music and the sound bites worked very well, especially the sounds from the shape shifters, which also worked well as a timing mechanism, for those who spotted that. Music Supervisor Innes Yellowlees helped to keep the timing just right with the sound cues.

There's an element of choreography in this theatre piece which, in the flyer/programme sheet is listed as Movement Direction. This area is thanks to Ching Chen (Jing), which also gives that feel of movement and fluidity throughout the show.

The whole show is smoothly stage managed by Rebekah Wild, keeping the show flowing at a fair old pace.

When it comes down to it, all of the above names are like cogs in a well run piece of machinery, but when you see the faces of the kids who were in the audience, you could see the enjoyment that they received from this show. What they may not have realised though were the subtle messages that they have also ingested by way of this lovely, clever and fun piece of theatre that they will probably use from today onwards and when growing up.

"Lose The Path, Find Your Way" is a one off performance at the Nottingham Playhouse, but the show is touring several one off performances of this show, so please visit the website or Facebook page for Cracking Slate for details of where you can catch this show, as well as other future productions that you may want to catch at some time in the future.