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Stella review – a moonlight marvel for children

Here’s a set that little hands would love to explore. A tower of scaffolding, decorated with colourful lightbulbs, looms above a super-soft bed. And is that a moon or a hula hoop suspended over the stage? Both, it turns out, in Filskit theatre’s irresistible lunar encounter, which uses aerial circus and clowning to spin a beguiling story for children aged three to eight.

Stella (Hannah Thompson), who dangles like the bulbs from the metal bars, lives on the moon. When children wish upon her stars, the lights flicker and crackle. In the city below, Ivy (Rachel Fullegar) fills her cosy home with lamps and lanterns as she’s scared of the dark. The pair are equally quirky, curious and nervous – likely as lonely too – but their lives are a mystery to each other when Stella crash-lands in Ivy’s flat.

The resulting comic confusion echoes the odd-couple setup of Filskit’s earlier productions Breaking the Ice (husky meets polar bear) and Huddle (penguin raises chick). There’s a touch, too, of Oliver Jeffers’ series of Boy picture books in this tale of a friendship that, like Amelia Bird’s clever set, bridges a mundane domestic world and the great unknown. In a nice touch, those bulb-stars glow like traffic lights for the city scenes.

Pleasingly for this age group, the show – co-devised by Thompson and Fullegar, and co-directed by Katy Costigan and Sarah Shephard – isn’t limited by a single easy moral or message. It touches on light pollution, the environment and the turbulence of modern life, as well as suggesting how bravery can brighten your horizons and sharing your hopes can enable communal change.

Both performances are engaging, though the projections, usually key to the Filskit style, feel a tad underpowered. Still, there is striking use of silhouettes for the woman-in-the-moon whose telescope is an apparent homage to Georges Méliès. Older children may crave a few more of Ivy’s science facts but younger ones are likely to delight in the tickling and cartwheeling with which this pair get to know each other – and the way they bound into the audience on their night-time adventure. When the hour is up, my six-year-old, Hilda, sighs: “I wish I was in that play.”