Review: The Terrible Infants (Wilton's Music Hall)

Theatre company Les Enfants Terribles was in a very different world when it debuted The Terrible Infants a decade ago. The highly stylised, bohemian blend of ensemble work and puppetry was innovative and fresh, bold and avant-garde. The group, now ten years older, with international tours and Olivier Award-nominations under its belt, return to the show for its anniversary outing, in what is nothing less than a vigorous revival.

The play, told by a cast of five alongside a plethora of highly stylised puppets, feels like a strange blend of balladic and frenetic. Over the course of two hours, the company weave together tales of petulant children, each with their own unfortunate quirks, coming to horrible ends. Imagine a modern day Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen, filtered through a Tim Burton-esque lens, with an extra dose of Roald Dahl. We see the smelly Mingus, forced to live in a bin, or Thingummyboy, the child so quiet and unnoticeable that everyone else forgets he even exists. Finbar is the boy who wants to be a fish, while Little Tilly can't stop lying through her teeth.

The stories overlap, battling one another and vying for our attention. At one point, four of the cast, bored of one of the tales, stage a mutiny to push onto the next. It's narrative pandemonium. In the second act, this energy waned, to the extent that a neat 90-minute straight-through performance may have been more suitable.

The talent is immense – actors leap from stylised physical sequences to refined puppetry, interspersed with musical interludes. All is overseen onstage by co-director and Les Enfants Terribles artistic director Oliver Lansley, who, within the show, acts as the self-appointed leader of the band of performers. The unending musical abilities of Christo Squier and Becky Bainbridge (who also recently appeared in the company's Alice's Adventures Underground) astounds, as do the ungainly and distinct postures of Serena Manteghi and Richard Booth. Listen out for the unmissable voice of Judi Dench, who pops up to give one of the tales extra verve.

The standout though is the production's aesthetic, courtesy of designer Samuel Wyer, as well as costume designers, Laura Drake Chambers and Rosie Elliott-Dancs. Through some fantastic craftsmanship, each puppet and sequence feels visually different from the last, while never losing the company's playful edge. When combined with the skills of the cast, this becomes quite magical, as typified by one underwater sequence towards the end of the first act. In the peeling, echoey decadence of Wilton's Music Hall, the show feels naturally at home.

With all the artists and theatremakers that have followed in the footsteps of Les Enfants Terribles, the show will struggle to feel as cutting edge as it last was. Even now there were unerring similarities to Sally Cookson's La Strada which toured earlier in the year. But the piece has aged nicely, swapping novelty for assurance, and each of the beastly bambinos spring to life as easily as ever. The company may be telling terrible tales, but they tell them terribly well.

The Terrible Infants runs at Wilton's Music Hall until 28 October.

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