AK09 review: Fluff at the Town Hall

Fluff at the Town Hall until 15 March. Photo / Supplied

The chicken dances flamenco; "Humpty Hotpants" makes rude noises; the octopus becomes a squelchy wig; and "Scary Cheeks" - my four-year-old co-reviewer's favourite – is a wee slip of a knitted doll who likes headbanging to heavy metal music. Welcome to the Gingham family's home for lost toys, where ten toys are each given their own noise, name and theme tune, in a lively but gentle Queensland show aimed at 3 to 8 year olds.

The Gingham family – so-called because their cheerful clothes are cut from the same blue check cloth as the backdrop – are electronic musician Peter Nelson, dancer Lisa O'Neill and show creator Christine Johnston, whose towering presence and black beehive hair-do my co-reviewer found a little formidable. Fluff showcases Johnston's remarkable vocal gymnastics – warbles, tweets, operatic vibrato, loud pops and low croaks – and while her words were largely unnecessary, the show's happy originality owes much to her non-verbal noise talent. A "sound off" between her vocal chords and O'Neill's tap-dancing feet is a nice bit of "anything you can dance I can sing faster" one up-skillship between the characters.

Also original is the feeding of real time noises – including audience impressions of frogs and chickens – into Nelson's onstage digital music machine in order to repeat them at various pitches on his keyboard. And on the non-audible front, the story of how each toy came to be lost – dropped from a car, caught by a wave, kicked over a goalpost like a ball - is succinctly and creatively shown in a series of large slide-like snapshots.

Johnston seems slightly hesitant about interacting with the audience, but the mass participation at the end was so enthusiastic – with the children identifying which toys were wide awake under their "doonas" – that it's a pity such invitations to shout don't start earlier in the hour.

No matter: Fluff is as light-hearted as its namesake, but far more interesting. And it makes a change from the Wiggles.