THEATRE REVIEW: Little Gift @ Traverse Theatre

It opens on a giant pile of suitcases. Little Gift (for ages 3-7) is whimsical, funny and imaginative. Guy Hargreaves gives an effervescent performance as the esoteric main character who looks into people’s dreams, sees their desires in them, and leaves behind a gift to help them attain them.

These are assignments given to him by some higher power. And one day he gets the job to give a gift to a man named Ted from the big city. He doesn’t know Ted or anything about him, so our messenger seeks him in the big city – made out of the big pile of suitcases in the centre of the stage. Now they represent skyscrapers and homes with humans in them.

The suitcases play many parts in this play. And one of them is Ted’s home. Ted is a lonely old man who avoids going out, but our messenger analyses Ted’s dream to see that he wants to go to a party, but he has no friends so he never will be invited to one. The messenger leaves Ted the gift of a seed. Ted wakes to his present and waters it. It becomes a plant (a green fork), he waters it more (it becomes a large green spoon – much to the hilarity of the boys sitting behind me in the theatre). Ted starts to see the plant (now a green zip) as a pet. He takes care of it, but despite this the plant wilts and it’s health is adversely affected being indoors all the time. Ted must take tentative steps into the world to save his plant. Once he sees the benefits of fresh air to the plant, he takes it on daytrips and even for a holiday to the Alps. The suitcases here function as buses and aeroplanes. By the time Ted is home his plant is the size of a huge tree (a green umbrella) and can’t fit into the house. He must let the tree grow outside. Ted must go outside too, in order to visit and take care of the plant, and he becomes known in the neighbourhood. And so Ted meets new people and has more of a social life. His new friends and neighbours decide to throw him a birthday party, so he finally gets what he wants – which is a life with other people in it.

This is a enchanting, amusing story for younger kids, with a fine musical accompaniment, nice retro feel and good puppetry.

Little Gift is made by M6 Theatre Company with Andy Manley, and music by Mark Melville and Guy Hargreaves.