At Sea – Little Angel Studios, London

Creator: Life and Limb Puppets 

At Sea is one of five shows being performed at the Little Angel Theatre’s Children’s Puppet Festival. Created by Life and Limb Puppets, At Sea has the potential to be an enchanting production. Visually, there are some stunning sequences which use imaginative projection to create magical scenes of underwater life. Together with this, the original music is delightful.

At the centre of At Sea is a very small puppet. It’s easy to assume he’s a child, unless you’ve read up online where it’s revealed he’s a sailor. Behind him are the shadowy figures of the three puppeteers who seem like giants. It’s a non-verbal piece – fair enough, but this accidentally reinforces the idea of the unnamed puppet being a child. Added to this, throughout he reacts to things as a small child would – with curiosity and puzzlement, making little babbling sounds.

And this goes to the heart of the issue with the show as it currently stands. The storyline just isn’t clear enough. There are certainly some lovely moments – the sailor’s interaction with a seabird, for example, or the repeated scenes of his trying to land a large fish. But by and large, episodes go on far too long without much happening at all. Importantly, it isn’t obvious that the glowing ball of light is meant to represent the sailor’s ‘heart compass’ which he loses and must retrieve. The iconography is confusing. Huge waving tentacles are obviously danger signs. But are whales meant to stand for good or evil? In particular, how is a young audience to know that the pretty mermaid is not, in fact, the Disney/Hans Christian Anderson heroine but a deceitful siren?

At Sea is badly in need of a story teller/dramaturg to bring all the scenes to life. It might also benefit from being workshopped in front of actual children to see what they best respond to.

Runs until 2 August 2026