Erin Harrington reviews Me and my Nana, directed by Melanie Luckman, at the Cloisters Studio at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, Thursday 11 April 2024.
Cubbin Theatre Company has spent the last six years developing thoughtful, well-designed performance works for that most under-served yet discerning of audiences: the very young. Me and My Nana is a warm and gentle work, designed for children aged 1-5, that explores the special relationship between a kid (Hester Ullyart) and her grandmother (Hannah Wheeler) as they go exploring on a rainy day. Amy Straker provides music on guitar, offering dreamy, nostalgic takes on pop songs, including a particularly lovely cover of Split Enz’s “Stuff and Nonsense”.
Many potential theatregoers might associate work for the young with a sort of manic ‘it’s behind you’ energy, but Cubbin’s approach is calm and spacious. This allows curious pre-schoolers time to focus on and explore shifts and patterns in movement, colour, and sound. The small Cloisters Studio space at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora is bare except for a low seat draped in a colourful checked blanket, another seat for Straker, and three rectangular panels wrapped in colourful yarn mounted on the wall. The performers are dressed in muted tones of green, terracotta and blue.
The 30-minute performance begins with introductions, a clapping game, and a song; young ones are invited to engage as they like. The story itself is very sweet: child and grandmother draw pictures in condensation on the window, eat some treats, and prepare to head out into the rain. Through gentle, clown-like and mostly wordless beats the pair muck about with yellow slickers and gumboots, mud puddles and apples, sticks and worms, raindrops and rainbows. Younger audience members, cuddled up with their grownups (including many nanas) are utterly focused on the action. They squeal at grandma’s silliness, call out at what they are seeing, and narrate the action. Nana and kid head home to get warm; the performance ends with a song and the audience are invited outside for chats and cuddles. It’s adorable – kind, gentle, whimsical, a balm to the brain.
Me and My Nana is a show with so much heart, and a clear sense of joy and wonder. I arrived excited to see some theatre for the young, which I love in general. Soapbox moment: I think far more adults, with and without children, should go see works for kids. Go – it’s not weird, honestly. It will improve your life. A few minutes in, though, I’m unexpectedly quite overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings about my own broader family relationships, and childhood, in part as my last remaining grandparent looks to be rapidly approaching the end of her life. I intend to chat to some of the audience, to get some feedback from the target audience, but instead have to go have a cup of tea and take a moment. Oops.
Cubbin Theatre Company is staging their 2024 season, made up of four performance works (including the lovely Up and Away), at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora – which is currently facing a catastrophic funding crisis that could undermine its ability to support work like this. I wrote the other day, about a very different but similarly joyful show, that the arts, which is often relegated to ‘entertainment’, offers an essential and very human service. Here, young people with developing brains are offered love and care, and a storytelling experience that honours their worldview without being patronising or overwhelming, in a space designed just for them. If that’s not worth supporting, even saving, then I don’t know what is.
Me and My Nana runs until Sunday 14 April. Cubbin Theatre Company’s 2024 season can be found here.
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