Me and My Shadow is about a girl discovering her shadow and the journey they take to become friends. It is stunning image theatre integrating storytelling with beautiful stage pictures, magic and illusion. As the program notes, it is a ‘visual poem for children’ telling the story with two performers, light, paper, shadow, colour, sound, music, water and words.

The production’s themes of play and friendship lead to the many joys and challenges that can arise through negotiating any relationship. The girl discovers her shadow and after initial uncertainty, her curiosity gets the better of her as they meet, get over preliminary annoyances and reach out to each other for friendship, adventure and exploration as well as unavoidable frustrations.

The structure of the piece is clearly laid out in sixteen acts. The beginning is ‘Playing And Dreaming’ followed by ‘Discovering Shadows’, ‘My Shadow Is Tricking Me’, moving through to ‘We Play Together’, ‘Sometimes He Is So Annoying!’, ‘I Had A Rotten Day Today’ and ending with ‘Me and My Shadow Will Be Friends Forever'. The structure has a gentle rhythm that moves smoothly through discovery, curiosity, fun and play to frustration and of course, making up.

The aspect of scale was played with exceptionally well using all theatrical elements. The design utilised the monstrous and minute in a dynamic and ever-changing paper backdrop, also including a paper match-box car; the performers experimented with scale through shadow play; sound was minimal one moment then boisterous the next; and lights filled the stage and balls of light were squashed into small paper bags. The use of scale gave a wondrous quality to the piece. The creative team appears to have thoroughly enjoyed themselves generating the show’s material and this energy rubs off onto the audience.

It was wonderful watching Astrid Pill play the girl. Her ability to be in the moment was a joy to behold. Her work shows total trust in children’s abilities to understand without the need to hold up “applause cards". This quality is a refreshing thing for young audiences to be exposed to. Nathan O’Keefe’s spritely shadow boy was a fabulous juxtaposition to the girl’s initial fixation on her own play. The boy’s cheekiness was ultimately irresistible, revealing a joyful friendship between the two.

Zoë Barry’s composition sat beautifully alongside the action and images in the piece, sometimes matching and sometimes contrasting to the visuals. It touched on light and dark, the magical and playful. There were fantastic sound effects supporting illusions, fabulously full melodies for chase scenes and enchanting sound for quieter moments which shifted between percussive and melodious.

The collaborative direction and design by Dave Brown, Geoff Cobham and Roz Hervey brought a plethora of skill and experience in theatre-making which resulted in a richly articulated performance. They obviously work well as a team as the story was eloquently told and the staging was fluent. The integration of all theatrical elements was seamlessly woven into a rich performance.

The technical aspects of the show supported and added to the production’s magic. Technical support from Jim Confos and construction by Bob Weatherly along with Lisa Osborn’s helping hand as stage manager obviously paid off. The majority of the audience was wide eyed with wonder but for the technically minded child asking, “How did they do that Dad?” it must have been magic because Dad didn’t have an answer.

Me and My Shadow offered such beauty to behold and magic to marvel at, the audience was nothing but engaged. Young audience members where transfixed. Their older counterparts where absorbed, sometimes chuckling, at other times brought to tears particularly when the girl banished her imagination from playing with her.

Patch pitches its work to 4-8 year olds and Me and My Shadow suits this age group, while also being a family friendly show where younger children can be filled with wonder and the child within the adult can be allowed to befriend their own imagination.

The joy of Patch performances is that children participate in live theatre by virtue of being audience members sitting together. Their involvement emerges through their wonder, curiosity and questioning that arises as they become absorbed by awe-inspiring images, humour, intriguing concepts and deftly executed illusions. Me and My Shadow was no exception to this. Patch’s story book adaptations are a joy to watch and it is also wonderful to see another devised work by the company. Me and My Shadow is superb theatre for young and old alike!

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