Review: Please right back

Mr E is on the run! In a sharp hat and suit, he’s jumped straight out of a film noir. Theatre company 1927’s trademark animations are splashed across three huge screens, and as actor Stefan Davis dashes through a crowded train on a top-secret mission, it feels like watching a graphic novel leap off the page. The slick synchronicity between these stylish projections and Please right back’s cast of four multi-tasking actors is jaw-dropping, an inventive form fit for a story that celebrates imagination and individuality.

Teenage Kim (played by Chardaè Phillips) and young Davey (a charming, cheeky animation) long for their dad to come home and are comforted only by his extraordinary letters. Meanwhile, mother (Jenny Wills) is trying to keep a creepy, intrusive “friend” (Lara Cowin) off their front step. The first half of this thriller is psychedelic yet focused, but when a metaphorical villain is swapped for a real one, the tension drops out. Greyscale ‘normality’ (and a stern warning about certain UK institutions) leaves plotlines unresolved, or solved but all too speedily. Still, the colour floods back for a moving ending to this sweet family’s story which, magically, unites fantasy with reality.