By Elena Lynch
Big Breath In is a vivid portrayal of a child’s magical adventure through physical theatre. Having never been to see a piece of solely physical theatre, I was intrigued as I walked into the rehearsal room. The cast of 10 have been working on Big Breath In for 3 weeks with the aim of creating a piece of devised theatre which will be accessible to children and enjoyable for students and, crucially, one that isn’t pretentious or patronising. In my opinion, they’ve succeeded.
The story revolves around a young boy who, after losing his balloon, embarks on a quest to find it again. Along the way he finds a trunk filled with toys, which plunge him into a strange and often confusing world. With this simple outline as a beginning director Oscar Wood, the cast and a team of musicians have devised a piece that swells to fill the room.
Each ‘scene’ is more like a sketch, which occurs as the child is whisked between different ‘worlds’. The conception and performances are sweet and funny: a world where people are always getting up in the morning is a highlight. On discovering a toy car in the trunk, a busy and noisy scenario takes place. Actors charged all over the stage, beeping and hooting, too busy to listen to the boy, played with aplomb by Jo Tyabji, desperately looking for his balloon.
Underscored by beautiful music composed by the cast, the play evokes a playful atmosphere. Pensive songs and steadier moments provide a refreshing respite from the intensity of the action and the overlapping, sometimes deliberately incoherent speech.
This piece returns to the very essence of physical theatre, but one leaves wondering whether the true potential of this medium was hampered by the strangeness of its story. I was often left wondering what fantasty world this next bizarre tableau was meant to represent. Sketches verge on silliness when the baffling imaginative leap they represent isn’t made clear. Physical theatre clearly has great imaginative and symbolic potential, aptly demonstrated by the opening of Big Breath In, the sketch which gives the play its name. A knot of actors formed a huge, single organism which breathed deeper and deeper, until after a final big breath, they explode into the loud and colourful world of a child’s imagination. This is a world which Oxford students would do well to share for an hour.
