The bright screen, the washing line with odd-looking garments hanging on it, the boxes, and the assorted bits and pieces that litter the Hannah Playhouse stage pique the interest of our young companions but none of us guess what’s about to happen. (A barely-noticed single spotlight is the key.)

The bumbling mutterer who makes his way by torchlight through the packed auditorium seems much too self-involved to present a solo show to the highly expectant audience. Besides, he (Tim Sneddon) is talking gibberish, apart from the very occasional actual word. Yet he turns out to be brilliant ant communicating what he is up to, and what he wants us to do.

Much apparently random fun ensues from his taping a pencil to one of his shoes (a ‘shoe phone’ gag for the oldies) and getting people in the audience to hold strips of packing tape high. Blowing up a beanie-wearing balloon and sticking the retrieved strips of tape to it just seems like more ridiculousness until he starts snipping at what he’s constructed with scissors. Can there be method in this madness? Yes.

The way it suddenly resolves into a human-like head, crisply silhouetted on the screen, earns spontaneous applause. Despite our having seen how he did it, or rather because we have seen it, the effect is truly magical. We watch the ‘man’ watching TV and marvel at how a shadow-head with a thumb providing the mouth and chin can express such a range of emotion – abetted by a clever sound track.  

Tim’s love and abuse of a stuffed toy and a professor-type’s bizarre cranial exploration of another person – the woman he loves? – ramps up the absurdism. It’s so absorbing to watch, we have to remind ourselves to look back at Tim to see how ingeniously he is creating these shadow-play scenarios.  

While many children in the audience may not be familiar with Chess as such, so take a while get what’s happening as a haggard couple hover over a game, the little love story that evolves is curiously heart-warming.

When Tim gets a strappingly fit-looking man up from the audience, to the shock and delight of his young son, some remarkably physical action ensues culminating in the guest receiving a martial arts lesson from a decrepit-looking yet formidable Ninja master. It is reassuring to keep checking that the two performers are metres apart as the shadows box and kick-box each other mercilessly.

The evocation of a steeplechase ingeniously employs a foot-pedalled conveyor belt. Again comparing what the actor is doing with the images up on the screen adds to the experience for the older and more analytical among us.

Having told us, “No matter how big you are you’re never too old to play,” Tim offers an encore involving glowing, reflected images that glide all over the auditorium and us. 

While I’m not quite sure why it’s called Sticks Stones, Broken Bones, it is certainly astonishing: a brilliant family theatre show that is bound to inspire home-grown shadow play in homes and schools throughout the land.
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Note:  Canadian-born originator Jeff Achtem, now resident in Australia, brought this show to Auckland two years ago for the NZ International Comedy Festival in Auckland. 

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