The Boy with the Cuckoo Clock Heart

Based on a novel by French author and rock singer Mathias Malzieu, The Boy with the Cuckoo Clock Heart juggles an uneasy mix of the macabre, vaudevillian world of its Victorian Edinburgh setting and the thoroughly Gallic symbolism Malzieu heaps upon it. Without a doubt, it's the latter that wins out, sentimentality beating back the darkness with Olympian perseverance. But, for all its cloying sweetness, there's a lot to like here.

In fact, Jimmy Grimes' Magpie Puppet Company makes a fine stab at staging the neat fable. Jack—born without a heartbeat on Edinburgh's coldest night in 1874 and given a clockwork one instead—is performed for the most part by a puppet, and it's here where the group, unsurprisingly, achieves greatest successes. Physically vulnerable and remarkably expressive, the clock-hearted puppet works well as a focus for the central conceit around the fragility of the human heart and its time-old tendency to get itself broken. Worthy of mention, too, is a superbly choreographed brawl between man and puppet – a scene worth watching for its technical mastery as much as its startling aggression.

Grimes and co also do a great job with the dialogue, translating the ethereal, fairytale quality of the novel's symbolically loaded text with almost unfailing assurance. Rare moments where the dialogue slips into dull functionality serve to throw into relief those much more substantial passages in which it swirls with lyrical force. There's also just enough humour, and a neat line in breaking the forth wall from the mercurial master of ceremonies, to keep those bright, sentimental colours from running into absolutely everything.