I’ve watched Frances Ha a lot in the last few years. If you haven’t seen it, it’s sort of about being a bit lost in a big city in your twenties, and it came to me at a point in my life when it was the thing I most needed to see. I think this is, in a way, the great potential of the arts: things can turn up at the point in your life when you really need them, and then you can return to them again and again. And the smaller, but equally lovely version of that is: sometimes a thing turns up on maybe just the DAY when it’s the thing you need, and that’s kind of what happened to me with Bears in Space.

Collapsing Horse bring a waft of Ronseal to the Upstairs space at Soho Theatre in doing exactly what it says on the tin: their silly, joyful show follows the adventures of two cosmonaut bears, as they face up to the villainous Premier Nico on a distant world. So bears in space, then. Although it’s a show for grown-ups, the company’s background in children’s theatre really shows in terms of how unabashed they are about the premise, and it’s very freeing.

The plot’s paper thin, but it doesn’t matter. There’s an entertaining, but actually fairly redundant framing device involving a storyteller relating the tale to us, but beyond setting the scene, they don’t really need it. All the performers are so energetic and committed that there’s no need to justify any of it, and things really kick off once the narrative proper gets going and they bring on the puppet bears.

Now, full disclosure: I love puppets. Like, I know I’m Johnny Theatre Critic and I’m supposed to be all cool and cynical, and I know puppets have become a watchword for whimsy in Fringe theatre, but I just do not, CANNOT care. I cry at The Muppet Christmas Carol every year, and I’ve cried at Bunk Puppets more than seems possible for human eyes, and I really enjoy watching puppeteers work. That bit where they actually do the same face as the puppet, because they’re buying into its internal reality SO MUCH, like when children play very seriously?? Yeah – that. I like that.

So please forgive me if you feel my critical judgement is therefore clouded, or at least a little compromised. But sometimes, like I said, stuff just finds you on the day you need it, doesn’t it? Sometimes you feel a bit tired and cross and you need to be reminded why we all bother sacrificing all this TIME to make and watch and write about theatre – and most of the time you think you want to be reminded about that by work that’s Worthy and Important, but, you know… Maybe sometimes all you need – or all I need, anyway – is to watch four talented performers really enjoying themselves on stage, and hear that very particular sound when an audience is startled into laughter by the curve of a joke so stupid that it becomes brilliant.

I mean, this isn’t the greatest show I’ve ever seen. (To be honest, it’s not even the greatest show I’ve seen this week, because I went to Hurtling on Saturday and it was NEXT LEVEL, but that’s not the bears’ fault.) If you could accuse them of anything, it would be a strange lack of confidence, reflected in the structure rather than the performances: they throw a bit much at it sometimes, with the whole show being split into ‘spools’ that the storyteller plays and broken up by interludes, using a projector and shadow puppets, and of course there’s real puppets and Human Acting and live music and this madly intricate, beautiful set (great design by Aaron Heffernan, also one of the company’s most versatile performers), and it can get a bit overwhelming. Twee as fuck, too, though it’s funny enough to wear that lightly, I promise.

But it feels, at times, like something that’s come out of an Edinburgh Fringe Blender, and you want to tell them to calm down because they’re brilliant, and the heart of the thing they’re doing is enough. I think it’s just a sign that this company is absurdly young, and that makes me excited, because they’re only going to get more confident. It’s the same as the framing device around the show, the storyteller: lads, you don’t even need it, it’s just training wheels. You have really fucking committed to this show about bears travelling through space, and that’s brilliant and fun and actually weirdly beautiful, and you’re good at this, so just – you know, take us there. Take us to space.

*

It was still light in Soho by the time my dad and I stepped out into the street. By an accident of planning (or not really an accident, but I can’t keep a thought in my head for more than two minutes at the moment, and anyway we had a very nice time so it doesn’t matter), my dad had come to Bears in Space with me, and as we wandered off to find somewhere to have dinner he said, “You know, that little one who played the baddie is the kid from Game of Thrones.”

So, shout-out to my more culturally aware father, because I don’t watch Game of Thrones (I know, I’m sorry, it is ON MY LIST) and would’ve had no idea, but it turns out Joffrey is in this show. So if bears aren’t your bag, maybe that’ll swing it? Dunno. Maybe.

And the bear puppets were really, really cute, by the way.