It’s always lovely to meet a show that is unafraid to take its time, and makes it worth your while in doing so. Though clocking in at a little under an hour, Tortoise in a Nutshell’s lovingly crafted world comes to life in long, slow, sweeping scenes more reminiscent of the golden age of the silver screen than of stagecraft.
Part puppet show, part live action comic book, Feral builds up an almost too perfect seaside town all in black and white. Practically wordless, aside from the narration of a young boy whose imagination and scrapbook are a riot of colour, it catalogues the destructive effect of the arrival of a ‘supercade’ on the lives of a small community.
If simplistic in narrative, this is more than made up for by its construction; as the level of detail achieved by the three strong team of puppeteers is delightful; from a cleverly simulated photobooth to the dismembering of the town map.
Though often more interesting to watch being made rather than to watch, Feral operates in this knowledge, foregrounding its tech team at the corners of the stage, and a chunk of the production can easily be spent being distracted by the one man band in the corner (Jim Harbourne) as he layers sound after sound to build up an entire funfair which anyone with even half a passing interest in foley will enjoy. The sound design is almost the real star, building from ridiculously idyllic to crashing riot in measured layers.
It is difficult to become emotionally invested in the world that Feral creates, but director Ross McKay may have a more subtle intention at heart, as even when the big business storyline fails to engender massive moral outrage, the nagging sense that in seeing this little town so meticulously built up (so frustratingly perfect) there was a small part of us that wanted to see it destroyed, lingers a little uneasily.
Hinting so in its own title, Feral is perhaps a gentle reminder that we are never very many steps away from the child that smashed sandcastles, or pulled the legs off bugs: just because he could.
