Picture book friendship gets a touch of stage magic

Oliver Jeffers' Lost and Found on stage at Factory International, 40 Farms outdoor exhibition trail, Uma Breakdown's online game, Remarkable life celebrated in Mama Afrika at Storyhouse

Dec 15, 2023

Lost and Found by Factory International (Pic: David Levene)

‘Is that real?’ the school girl behind me pauses from kicking my seat to ask this question as an enormous seagull lands on top of a wooden post on the Factory International stage.

‘It’s not real,’ she concludes, but her scepticism sounds a bit wobbly despite the puppet’s size. It would surely take a Gregg’s pasty the size of a suitcase to satiate this bird’s appetite.

This new theatre production of Lost and Found, adapted and directed by Will Brenton, has grasped the key to the magic of the original version. Oliver Jeffers’ picture book, about the growing friendship between a boy and the penguin who turns up randomly on his doorstep, is rich in illustration but sparse in words. Reading it with your own little ones invites them to fill in the gaps either silently in their imagination or in conversation with you - and that’s part of the entertainment.

And so it is here, where children are asked to help find mislaid pieces of the Boy’s boat before he sets off to return the Penguin to his supposed home in the South Pole - and are invited on stage to push-start it. Sophia, the little girl chosen for this task, unexpectedly delivers a lecture on how the Boy is doing it all wrong and needs to try a different technique.

Meanwhile, my seat neighbour warms into her role as resident cynic, chanting ‘Fake! Fake! Fake!’ when the penguin first shuffles on to stage, a cosily fluffy version of Jeffers’ illustrations. And later, when the Boy takes the Penguin to the Lost and Found Office, she declares the human actor behind a desk is a robot.

To be fair, he doesn’t look entirely real as it’s only his human head poking out of a cartoonish costume. His telescopic arms stretch around the stage as he picks out items to return to their owners, cunningly pulled along by one of the puppeteers with her own hand slipped through the cuff.

Jean Chan’s set is filled with ingenious elements like this. The stage is flanked by piles of rubbish from which emerge the Boy’s home, his garden shed, the missing pieces of boats and even an iceberg. There is a gasp from the kids in the audience when the Boy’s red front door has miraculously swapped to the green one of the shed as a curtain of discarded traffic cones, lifebuoys and old bits of rubbish is pulled back.

An animated backdrop brings Jeffers’ world to life on a giant scale, so you feel like you’ve stepped inside one of his books and can’t wait to explore. Gruff Rhys’ (Super Furry Animals) score is far from childish, but conveys the simplicity of children’s deeply-felt emotions as it draws you from scene to scene.

The story is just as entrancing when the two friends are played person-sized by Richard Hay (Boy) and Lydia Baksh (Penguin) as when they are shrunk down to tiny puppets to show the vast scale of a ship they unsuccessfully attempt to hitch a ride on. And their emotional reunion on the icy Antarctic sea proves that you don’t always know you are lost until you are found.

Lost and Found is at Factory International, Aviva Studios, until January 6, 2024. Tickets are priced from £15, with affordable tickets starting at £7.50, here.

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