Review: Breathe, Fringe 2024

Breathe is a puppet show suitable for kids. It’s hot in the King Dome, a sort of bladder-massaging, sleep-inducing, and uncomfortable heat (bring a paper fan), but despite all that, I only heard a few little voices speaking up from the audience.

In other words, Beathe held the attention of young kids in a hot room for an hour.

Breathe is also a musical. The two combine to tell the story of a woodland and an acorn. 

The music is good. Darcey O’Rourke is the star player, playing the guitar and doing most of the vocals, while Louisa Ashton and Peter Morton handle the puppets. All can sing and do, though.

It’s the type of puppet show that makes Breathe unique. It’s up close with smartphones. At times, it’s macro puppetry with the camera zoomed into a diorama while Darcey sings and the audience watches.

The geek in me wants to know why we don’t get more of this as music videos from Warhammer fans or D&D dioramas.

Tone

Breathe is a circle-of-life story, but the only thing that actually dies is a friendly leaf with a face on it.

There’s a bit of danger, too, as a bird puppet flies over a bug puppet. The bug puppet is only 1/10 creepy, but it is worth noting in case anyone, young or not, is especially sensitive.

There’s loads of education in Breathe. There are hundreds of different types of flies in the woods, and the mushroom network expands hugely under the trees.

Since this is mainly a kid’s show, most learning moments are via song and puppet combo. The exception is the very start, where all three performers take turns, a sentence in turn, to explain the story. As an impatient adult, the ‘kid tone’ of voice certainly stood out to me, and this was one of the few ‘get on with it moments’.

There are only a few ‘get on with it moments,’ and these might all be to ensure young minds in the audience have the time to work out what’s going on. For example, our Seedling character learns to use his legs, which he mastered fairly quickly but a bit too long for my liking.

I think a key difference is whether the puppet is moving because there’s a song—always acceptable—or whether the team was just humming and being musical while Seedling did something safely banal—less acceptable.

What to expect

I liked the tech and the models! I mean that the puppets were good but the background was even better.

“Half a String”, which performs Breathe, has a magic trunk that begins life with a forest floor diorama on it. It looks like the piece, too, and the smartphones zoom all the way in so we can see a bug puppet crawl over our acorn.

Next, the magic trunk flips open to reveal the woodland roots, which glow impressively in places and are home to more puppets.

Later, the same trunk splits in two and is reassembled as the side of a tree. 

At times, the lights go down except for a spotlight to highlight Darcey and the guitar for the song. It’s in these moments that Louisa and Peter gracefully swirl around in the darkness to build the next scene, wheel the camera stands into place, and set up the next act.

I suspect the kids’ favourites and certainly a dramatic moment is when a puppet is placed on a wire rig around a smartphone and then flies into the audience. The venue raises the lights a little bit, and if you’re very lucky (or unlucky), you can see yourself in the background on the big TV that displays all this camera work.

Overall

I liked the music. While each set had many common elements, Half a String seemed to have tried to be as musically diverse as possible.

I really liked the cleverness of the macro-stage, with its detailed models and the engineering wonder of the diorama trunk.

The story, which was all true except for all the made-up bits, was kid-appropriate but not very inspiring. I, though, was there for musical puppets and didn’t mind!

If you trust your kids to enjoy an hour in the King Dome, I recommend Breathe. If you’re a fan of puppetry, I bet you already have tickets.