How good are seven-year-olds with abstract nouns? I ask because there’s a lot of hope/joy/compassion and the like in this well-meaning and socially conscious “immersive” piece, based around a series of appealing new permanent installations dotted about the Battersea Arts Centre (BAC).
Yet it’s the past, not the future, that is our first port of call, as we learn about pioneering social campaigner Jeanie Nassau Senior, who in 1861 moved to Elm House on the site of the current-day BAC.
We’re the “timekeepers”, complete with an appealing twiddly-thumb gesture, and our task is to work with a cheery team of eight performance leaders to gather clues about Jeanie’s life to bring back to the Archivist (my group of schoolchildren seemed to think an archivist was a character from Doctor Who).
Writer/director Sarah Golding gathers us first in the Council Chamber, where we hear that Jeanie was a friend of George Eliot and could have been the inspiration for Dorothea in Middlemarch, and then sends us in groups to explore.
There’s a limited amount of wandering possible, though overall Elm House promises more than it delivers, before tailing off badly. It is, however, an appealing change from the plastic tat-heavy shows that jockey for position in the competitive children’s entertainment market at this time of year.
Until Dec 30 (020 7223 2223, bac.org.uk)
The best theatre of 2018
