It is not often that a show has me grinning even before it has begun. From the squeaky and adorable Tiffle greeting the audience at the entrance, to the quaint set design and Vivaldi’s charming
Dreamkeepers is an enjoyable production that stresses above all the importance of being kind to others.
Professor Harofligab and her apprentice Tiffle are dreamkeepers who distill and store the essence of people’s hopes and dreams. When the dreams in their Dream Vault start fading, they summon Chloe Harrison, a dreamer from Brookfield School where bullying has caused the number of dreams to plummet to unhealthy levels. With the help of the dreamkeepers, Chloe learns about the causes and consequences of bullying. She eventually understands that being a passive onlooker, or ‘laugh-along’, makes her part of the problem, and that the best way to react to bullying is to take an active stand against it.
Miriam Sorin Buckeridge and Stephen McCombe are simply superb as Harofligab and Tiffle. The likeable pair caper energetically across the stage as they enthrall the audience with their antics. The play stresses the importance of having dreams for the future: ‘Dreams are for life, not just for bedtime’. It also does a good job in reinforcing its anti-bullying message, telling us that it is a terrible crime to crush a dream.
The show might have been even more engaging, however, if these educational messages were integrated more fully with the funny and fantastical dreamkeeping framework. The endearing mannerisms of Professor Harofligab and Tiffle are spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down, but perhaps a more gripping storyline would have made this divide between the serious and funny less marked.
That said, Dreamkeepers is an enjoyable production that stresses above all the importance of being kind to others. Take your children to see it. It will be an hour well-spent.
