Comedian Martha McBrier’s first foray into children’s theatre betrays none of the fledgling anxiety that is often found in even the most experienced children’s performers. If one should commend McBrier for anything, it would be for the effortlessness of her weird and serious story – earnest without the lurid smiles and nervous bounding around that commonly reveals the fretting adults trying to hide from the scrutiny of our children.
Considering that the story’s impetus is a moral one about crossing the road safely, it is a miracle that McBrier is not patronising. Against all odds, the show isn’t tedious – in fact, thanks to the wit with which McBrier sustains the mystery of the lollipop lady the audience was engrossed. The lollipop lady frightens the children protagonists, for a long time we cannot see her face on the illustrated picture projections that accompany the story. The effect is frightening even for adults. McBrier treats her characters’ fear with seriousness and as wide-eyed children and endeared adults we cannot but be serious too.
Yet McBrier’s seriousness is not the boring seriousness of a person with a message but the committed seriousness of a storyteller talking importantly about a really very scariesome lollipop lady. In this respect – with its deployment of absurd flights of imagination – the show resembles a Roald Dahl novel or a Dr Seuss poem. At one point, for example, McBrier digresses to describe a dream in which a character is chased by a lollipop stick that he stole. The dream is told using an animation, which is projected onto the same screens that earlier showed McBrier’s drawings. Admittedly the animation is overly simplistic and its relevance is unclear but taken for what it is (a puzzling digression) it is actually quite a nice surprise.
McBrier mixes her media well, taking the venue in stride and doing the best she can to use audience interaction to make the space exciting. Indeed there is more charm in her intelligent method of addressing the young audience than in the aesthetics of what she is doing. She knows that children like to be made afraid and is aware of what aspects of adulthood frighten them. Nevertheless she emphasises from the beginning that she wants everyone to be happy and to do whatever they want during the show. Consequently, when babies start to cry their noise feels less like a problem and more like proof that she has succeeded in putting everyone at ease. This is the atmosphere that encourages the children in the audience to be brave when they are called on to act, and act they do – confidently and well, inspired as they are by the simple, unabashed Martha McBrier.
