Chalk About is billed in the brochure as a “highly inventive show for kids and their families” and as we move into the Hannah Playhouse auditorium we are asked to sit near the front because “it is very interactive.” This sets up certain expectations.

The two performers – Christine (from Scotland) and Niels (from the Netherlands) – are already chalking the floor: body outlines, shoe prints, hoof prints, funny faces, random squiggles … Children are invited on to add more – and they are happy to do so.

There are white felt cut-outs of bodies too, life-sized to fit the chalk outlines. And white helium balloons. Christine and Niels dance, he forgets what to do, they’ll come back to that later … Their report on the responses they got from kids when they asked what they would, and would not, like to see in a show is amusing: both predictable and surprising.

An energetic sequence ensues, including most of the ‘want to sees’ and some of the ‘don’t wants’. Then we get the show they did make, ostensibly about Christine and Niels’ lives and relationship (although Chalk About was originally created Christine Devaney and Leandro Kees, so Neil could be role-playing here … No matter). They work together with a profound familiarity.

She talks about growing up in Scotland … Although I continue to trust this is going somewhere, I do begin to wonder who this show is pitched at, as the small kids who got involved in the chalking show signs of getting bored. For adults her story is reasonably interesting but it’s not exactly distilling essential truths. When its Neils’ turn he gets tongue-tied so they dance again and this time he remembers it all.

It is when Neils starts asking questions – direct address to the audience – beginning “Do you think I …?” and a boy in the front row puts his hand up enthusiastically, wanting to answer, and is totally ignored, that the show loses my trust.

When Neils goes on to tell his story in Dutch and draws images, the fact that we understand a lot despite the language barrier is interesting in itself – to analytical adult minds. But the small kids are alienated and seriously bored now.  

Throughout the show we hear recordings of kids’ voices answering questions and making comments on themes that arise in Christine and Neils’ stories – like death, for example – but there is no such interaction with the present audience. Frankly that feels like a cheat.  

The media-release claim that they “take the old playground game of making chalk outlines and turn it into a playful, funny and sometimes moving look at how we fill in the outlines of each other’s identities” is true; that is what they do. Their idiosyncratic personalities emerge in the process and there are some very subtle observations and shifts in mood that provoke intuitive empathy at times.

A sequence that cleverly uses paper clothing to profile and satirise gender role stereotyping is certainly inventive, if a bit hackneyed in its message. And there is no doubt the way the felt figures and helium balloons come into their own is lyrical and lovely to watch. Children may well pick up on some of these ideas in their own play at home or school (especially if they can get access to helium).  

But in the end, for all its charm and creativity, and its working on the premise that the personal is universal, I can’t shake off the feeling that Chalk About is rather self-indulgent and just a bit smug. 

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