Human Child

A country of eternal playtime, where no one makes you go to school and sorrow is unknown, sounds wonderful, at least until you remember all you have left behind.

Based on W.B. Yeats early poem, The Stolen Child, this beguiling children's play has many of the components of a children's classic – from the lonely imaginative child at its heart to the heady tumble into strange worlds.

Misfit Leila doesn't want to play the boring games of other children. Why should she have to be a secretary or damsel just because she's a girl? Her dad is finding her hard to cope with with her, and she's always being told off by her teacher for being "awa' wi'the faeries". And then one day, when Leila is feeling especially hurt and misunderstood, idiom becomes reality. She answers the siren call of three sprites to "Come away, O human child!" and leave a mortal land "more full of weeping than you can understand." But all is not as it seems, and soon the race is on for Leila to return home before a changeling takes her place forever.

Irish theatre collective, Collapsing Horse, was founded by a musician, an actor, a puppeteer and a comedian and Human Child reaps all the multi-disciplinary benefits. The live guitar music, including a beautiful folk setting of Yeats' poem, is atmospheric; puppet work is imaginative and varied; acting is uniformly strong and, importantly, the script bubbles over with Irish craic.

Human Child's unexpectedly poignant lesson mellows the production's brassy top notes and lingers longer than a conventional Happily Ever After.