PRISM – creating a lens onto real life through the refraction of science fiction theatre (Replay Theatre as part of Belfast Children’s Festival + tour) #BCF23

Replay Theatre Company takes kids’ theatre incredible seriously. The clue is in their website’s statements of vision and purpose: “enriching lives through world class theatre … because every child has the right to imagine”.

So the set for new work PRISM is not constructed out of six white cubes that can be rearranged into different Tetris-like shapes on stage. No. Darren Robinson has designed a three-sided spacecraft control room, complete with flashing lights and large portholes leading towards unseen living quarters and an airlock. The space is dominated by a vertical control column – the somewhat communicative ‘Prism’ AI that runs the ship – and two tall, vertical displays that provide a view out into space and can be overlaid with information from the craft’s databanks. Lights extend out over the heads of the audience, partly to allow us to be comfortable leaving and re-entering the theatre stalls, but also to draw us into the action.

While the lighting, soundscape and set provide a rich sensory environment into which two actors can manoeuvre, the audience’s ability to take all this in is never assumed. Audio description is designed into the natural DNA of the show, narrating the action and describing the ship’s interior workings with a beautifully rich yet accessible vocabulary. Every performance is captioned and half the shows have BSL interpretation.

Into this welcoming world step Dawn and Dusk. Catriona McFeely plays the craft’s engineer, carrying a toolbox and making the umpteenth attempt to logically repair her ship to escape the ‘void dimension’ of nothingness in which they have been trapped. Dawn is teachery, a little abrupt, with a tendency to supress unnecessary or uncomfortable details. The Yang to her Yin is Dusk (Tierna McNally), a less-informed traveller who has apparently experienced memory loss after a crash and is undergoing a programme of re-education. Dusk is curious, instinctive and creative, full of fun, and beautifully bursts into song in a scene that steals the show.

Where do we come from? Where are we going? How will we get there? Who’s coming on the journey, for good or bad? Common questions that run through many children’s lives. Gary Crossan gives the script plenty of great science fiction mumbo jumbo, but there’s never any risk that the audience will experience a bad bout of chromatic reverberation as the characters carry the science lightly while Dawn explores her guilt and Dusk tries to uncover her past. There’s a line about “going to take a good look at your protocols” that’ll make the politically aware smirk as the crew flounder in the ‘void’!

Endings seem perennially difficult in hour-long theatre shows. There’s not a lot of time for the steam to build up, and even less time for it to be released before the house lights need to go on and the audience step back out into the real work. The big reveal about Dawn’s role in Dusk’s amnesia lacks much jeopardy, perhaps too well foreshadowed by earlier scenes. Though I’m watching and writing as an adult, and none of the children and young people in the audience (the show is suitable for ages 7+) looked at all perturbed!

A Moog Theremin has snuck on board the ship and is played live. The audience are invited to explore the set and play with it after the show finishes. Another example of how Replay encourage the demystification of theatre and open up the experience to their young audiences.

Directed and scored by Andrew Stanford, PRISM’s run at Belfast Children’s Festival is now over, but the show is touring through Strabane, Sligo, Omagh and Portstewart during the rest of March. Belfast Children’s Festival continues until Sunday 12 March. Watch out for Replay’s second show in the festival – Mirrorball (ages 15+) – next weekend in the Lyric Theatre, along with other theatre like I Am Maura (I reviewed an earlier production back in 2019), The Invisible Man and Light.

Photo credit: Neil Harrison

Enjoyed this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!