The Stage

The Great Escape (A Borrower’s Tale)

Published Monday 6 December 2010 at 13:03 by Natasha Tripney

Kazuko Hohki’s eccentric but inventive promenade production for six to 11-year-olds takes its inspiration from Mary Norton’s novels about a race of tiny people who live under the floorboards.

Kazuko Hohki (Miss Hohki) and Neil Callaghan (Mr Neil) in The Great Escape (A Borrower's Tale) at Battersea Arts Centre Photo: Tristram Kenton

The young audience members are required to don lab coats and play investigator, searching the BAC for evidence of Borrower activity. Hohki and her team of white-coated chaperones lead them from room to room, up stairwells and into the building’s attic space, and the participatory elements as well as the constant shifts in location ensure they never get restless.

It helps that there is regular variation in tone, with one room decked out like a museum of Borrower artefacts which the children are invited to examine, while another has been converted into a cinema.

Hohki, a performance artist and member of cult act Frank Chickens, also leads the audience in a Borrower concert, performed on tiny elastic band mandolins and teaspoon guitars, before taking them outside for a rather thrilling finale on Lavender Hill.

Although quirky in both concept and execution, the show is well-aimed at its target age group, engaging the children’s interest and encouraging them to explore. It is full of inventive little details and, in places, capable of creating a real sense of adventure.