Writer and Director: Molly Freeman
Already a winner of two OFFIE awards, Kinder is an absorbing and touching show which, although designed for 8-10-year-olds, will enchant adults. Smoking Apples uses puppetry, sound and visuals to tell the story of Babi, a Jewish child who is put on the last Kindertransport out of Czechoslovakia. The puppeteers are always visible behind their creations, but their extraordinary expressiveness adds another dimension to the piece, as does their confident use of different languages.
We sit contained in a box. It’s all a bit homemade and basic, with various signs and holiday posters and, on one side, a tiny model train. There’s a screen in front of us on which shadow puppets emerge, their pleasingly spiky design reminiscent of traditional Czech animation. On the walls are various hatches that spontaneously burst open to reveal one or more of the material puppets. On the wall is a painted outline of war-torn Europe. Elsewhere, railway signs flip over to signal where we are.
The action begins in the present when Babi, an old woman, is setting off from England on an overland journey to Prague to show her birth city to her grandson. Then we are whisked back to 1938 to watch her childhood unfold.
Babi’s story is a touching one, made all the more effective by immersing us in a child’s experience. And it’s the babble of European languages which are not only atmospheric, but present us with the bewilderment a child must have felt, torn from her family, and making a fearful journey alone across to England. Babi only speaks Czech, so when a voluble woman appears at the German border chatting in German, we feel her confusion. The antics of Claus, the puppet dog, hurtling around the audience brings comic relief. When the train crosses into Holland, we hear one of the affecting recorded voices of former Kindertransport children, recalling the wonder of first encountering white-bread sandwiches.
Arriving in Liverpool Street, Babi is frozen with bafflement and fear as other children are allocated families. She herself ends up in Margate with the kindly Mrs Walker and her life begins to take shape. Cleverly we see the adults from a child’s point of view. All are huge – appearing in various hatches, they’re only visible from the waist down). To Babi’s (and our) confusion, the English are almost impossible to understand, all speaking in various mangled forms of English. We see her gradually gaining confidence in her adopted language.
Throughout we return to adult Babi’s journey to Prague. Sentimentality is avoided by the grandson’s initial refusal to engage, preferring the screen of his smartphone to his grandmother’s beloved folk tales. The ending, when it comes, is deeply moving.
Runs until 3 September 2023 and then continues to tour
