Plop! engaged its young audience with picnicking rabbits, bears, a pond full of water, plops and other strange sounds and apples — lots of apples. Not to mention mystery, illusion and dance beats generated from kids’ noisy toys.

Once the audience was seated, it didn’t take long for Roberta and Roger, fluffy rabbit puppets, to run away from the scary sounds emanating from uncertain sources, leaving the performers, Nathan O’Keeffe and Nadia Rossi to deal with the scary bear, Tyson Hopprich and ‘to stop the terrible plop.’

Plop! was funny and a whole lot of fun. It was created as part of the Come Out program and Windmill’s third Book to Performance initiative with The Advertiser’s The Little Big Book Club. It was an adaptation of Ursula Dubosarsky’s The Terrible Plop, which was inspired by an ancient Tibetan myth. The theatre rendition focussed on the essence of the story rather than a literal translation from page to stage. Dubosarsky’s comment on the book was, ‘It has a very strong forward narrative with excitement and suspense and a little mystery.’ The creative team used these elements of pace, excitement, suspense and mystery to convey the essence of the story in this production. It was heartening to see director Sam Haren’s trust in theatre’s capacity to carry the spirit of the story.

Plop! was predominantly an exploration of the storybook through image, sound, rhythm and movement. Haren’s simple pretext of the plop, or the plop that never eventuated, was the structural focus of the piece. The variation in plops and plops that don’t quite happen differed and flew off on various tangents, keeping the audience locked in on the ‘plop dispenser’ and wondering what would happen next. Integral to this was Geoff Cobham’s set with most of the mechanics in full view adding to the anticipation and hilarity as the audience saw what was about to happen to the unsuspecting characters. Nevertheless, Cobham had enough tricks up his sleeve to maintain a sense of surprise and mystery; the magical pond that changed colour, smoked, inflated balloons and revealed gadgets filled the audience with wonder.

DJ Tr!p doubled as the bear. The simple on-stage transformation from DJ to bear and back again was a helpful image for the audience to accept that the bear wasn’t really scary, despite the scary sounding roar coming through his voice distorter. Aside from the distorter, the sound desk was full of gadgets from which Hopprich mixed a collection of noisy toys and children’s instruments into a soundscape of beats and rhythms, underscoring and highlighting the action and carrying the rhythm of the performance. As a DJ, Hopprich was engrossed in the moment and an absolute delight to watch. His caterpillar break went off as the actors got the audience up to dance to the beat of a small plastic earthmover! Luckily for his post-mosh lullaby, the kids’ boisterous boogie was, in time, calmed to quiet attention.

The on–stage focus was predominantly between Hopprich as a solo performer and O’Keefe and Rossi as a duo. The performer’s carried the anticipation and excitement of the show and shifted this energy skillfully between DJ and actors. O’Keefe and Rossi worked well together, appearing to really hit their stride as ‘stopping the plop’ became more extreme when the show went under water with snorkeling and aqua balloon inflation. In particular, the vivacity they brought to the apple pie antics was infectious.

Made for 1–4 year olds, the audience gave the impression that the format was best suited to the older age bracket, who lapped up every moment, being familiar with the concept of story time. On the other hand, mobile under two’s where on a sitting/dancing schedule quite separate to the show’s. This raised the question, what would a one year old friendly ‘stage’ and ‘auditorium’ look like?

An aspect of the production that did seem more appropriate for the whole of the intended age group was the less structured post show on–stage interaction. It did get congested with eager children wanting to take part but such is the nature of inviting the audience into a confined stage area. The opportunity for tangible experiences of the pond, the changing lights focussed on the pond, the puppets and musical instruments brought an important aspect to the theatre experience.

The Windmill catch phrase in the 2009 program is ‘cheer, boo, applaud loudly.’ During the 30 minute performance there was no booing but cheering and applause aplenty.

References Quoted in The Advertiser, April 6 2009, pg. 24

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