Trying to explain consumerism to ten-year-olds while keeping it light-hearted enough for a few laughs is certainly not an easy balance to strike, but Planet Much N’ Stuff, opening at this year’s ŻiguŻajg festival, does so with ease. With Douglas Comley as creative director, and Benji Cachia as music director, the show has no straightforward plot but instead uses a dynamic cast of nine that weave modern choreography into a series of skit-like scenes, each one angled to show a different aspect of the consumer world. The experimental elements of the play felt like they were in line with a child’s imagination, while also being more than entertaining enough for the parents to comfortably sit through. One particularly memorable sequence, for example, shows shop workers advertising and preparing for a sale.
The customers, after a dramatic countdown, run out in even more dramatic slow-motion, all fighting over unlabeled boxes like rabid animals. In every scene, the performers used exaggerated gestures, sound effects, and playful interactions with the audience to heighten the comedy and make the lessons simple, but not condescendingly so. The different elements, especially in the relatively small space of Spazu Kreattiv’s stage, were impressively blended together, and the whole thing felt altogether seamless—an element easier said than done when you have very excited children close to the performers reacting to everything they’re seeing. In such a space, a creatively limited, not overwhelming amount of props is important and was again pulled off brilliantly by the production team. The main prop, in fact, was just a box that consequently served as a ritualistic drum, a giant trashcan, and even a space from which actors first emerged to the young audience’s wide-eyed amazement.
The customers, after a dramatic countdown, run out in even more dramatic slow-motion, all fighting over unlabeled boxes like rabid animals. In every scene, the performers used exaggerated gestures, sound effects, and playful interactions with the audience to heighten the comedy and make the lessons simple, but not condescendingly so. The different elements, especially in the relatively small space of Spazu Kreattiv’s stage, were impressively blended together, and the whole thing felt altogether seamless—an element easier said than done when you have very excited children close to the performers reacting to everything they’re seeing. In such a space, a creatively limited, not overwhelming amount of props is important and was again pulled off brilliantly by the production team. The main prop, in fact, was just a box that consequently served as a ritualistic drum, a giant trashcan, and even a space from which actors first emerged to the young audience’s wide-eyed amazement.
The play ended with a more interactive moment in which the children in the audience were asked to look for boxes containing messages encouraging them to make things last and to buy less. Again, these are vital lessons for children to learn early on, but it felt like a somewhat underwhelming ending to what was otherwise an extremely hopeful and inventive production. That said, the children in the audience clearly seemed to enjoy the performance, engaging with it throughout and I have no doubt that it gave them a lot of important things to take home and think about. All in all, Planet Much N’ Stuff is a rich, dynamic performance that more than deserves to be experienced by young audiences.
