Fireside Tales Review – Punchdrunk Enrichment Sets Imagination on Fire | Children’s theater

We’re going to watch Fireside Tales and my five-year-old son Benji is full of questions. Will the fire be real? Where will we sit? Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Benjy’s anxiety to settle down. The new Punchdrunk Enrichment offering, like its predecessors, has been created with schools, communities and children in mind. It’s a gentle, generous piece of immersive theater – often taking children by the hand, quite literally, and inviting them to become part of the story.

To get started, we’re invited to browse the “Book Store,” full of interesting trinkets to touch and play with. After allaying anxiety and arousing curiosity, it’s time to enter the Punchdrunk Enrichment Store where the show begins. And what a store it is, designed with complete attention to detail by Mydd Pharo. The shelves are filled with strange things; Clusters of feathers, boxes of globes, bundles of photographs, sparkling lava lamps, and dusty typewriters.

Rebecca Clarke and Amari Harris play the store’s owners, Cozy and Ali, who are full of enthusiasm and seriousness. The two explain that their mission is to catalog all the stories of the world: air, water, fire, and earth. The children listen carefully and happily join in. One child shares her story about an alien peacock puffing a bright blue feather into the air. A little boy holds a torch aloft, and when the phone starts ringing, a girl picks it up gingerly. A new story is coming, the girl proudly tells us. It is a story of fire!

At this point, Benji is so excited that he runs right away. Small flashes of light flash around the store as the story of the fire “jumps” from one thing to the next, lighting up the room with a dance of flames. We follow the flame out of the store into the courtyard. It’s another beautiful space with crumbling ivy-covered walls, a huge unlit fire and stacks of logs to sit on. “This is amazing,” Benji exclaimed as he grabbed my hand and found a good place to sit and take it all in.

The atmosphere is charming but Steve McCourt’s script is starting to feel tense. The two members of the store share their stories about the house and, oddly enough, are the least remembered part of the show. But there are still some special moments. We are asked to draw a picture of the house, and the children hold scraps of paper and charcoal sticks, scribbling quietly. happy. to focus. Completely immersed in their imagination.