Puppets can always be a bit of a gamble when it comes to family shows. Get it right and you can transport entire audiences to amazing worlds filled with fantasy creatures with just a few bits of cloth and some sounds. Get it wrong and you have some creeped-out and confused kids and some slightly nonplussed adults.
Creative Group Ssak are a performing arts group from South Korea that specialises in telling stories with puppets, sound and very few words. Hauntingly beautiful at times, and at other times utterly ridiculous, this is a show that begins with the puppeteers jumping around the stage playing kazoos and ends with an unforgettable story about hopes, dreams and a flying whale.
This is a lovely and fun journey into whimsy. We get lots of different styles of puppets, from the very large to the very small, and they all communicate in a way that’s mostly non-verbal. Each story has a similar theme; they are all in some way connected to the water, and they are all about combining wisdom and bravery to do the right thing. (Even though some of the characters are quite stupid.)
Be prepared that this show is in one of the fringe’s many shipping containers, and you might need to ask someone which one of those this show is in. The small space genuinely works to the show’s advantage, however.
Dream Space is well named. This is a lucid hallucination of a show, filled with gentle stories and some stunning acts of puppetry. Well worth taking the family to see.
You can book tickets for the Edinburgh Fringe show here and learn more about the artists here.
