I Am Beast

Sparkle and Dark’s neon-noir comic book story is a sexy, shiny thing but its message struggles to be heard amid the effervescent glare of its design.

The death of Ellie’s mum pushes her into a dark cartoon world in which she becomes Blaze, an all-punching, all-kicking heroine. Meanwhile, a huge puppet beast haunts lumbers around the stage as some kind of metaphor for her inner kick-ass warrior. The white walls of her bedroom and the mundanities of her house are transformed under UV light to reveal the fluorescent streets of another world. 

The show hits all the right marks as a comic book pastiche, with Blaze trying to defeat Dr Oblivion and track down her sidekick Silver. It’s as exaggerated as Powerpuff Girls, and Lizzie Muncey’s breathless Ellie has all the innocence and anger of a child on the brink of adolescence.

Fight sequences and other physical effects look good and combine to create an imaginative aesthetic, but they stop the show from building up momentum and don’t contribute much to the underlying themes of grief and loss.

Lawrence Illsley’s live electronica score is the perfect complement to the UV and neon streetlit world of Ellie’s imagination. But the lighting is what makes the show: the transition from reality to fantasy in the flick of a switch. 

Child psychologists consulted on the show, and it does try to be an earnest portrayal of a child dealing with the loss of her mother. But the production puts too much emphasis on its image and not enough on the mental repercussions of Ellie’s grief: the balance tips too far in favour of matter over mind.