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Mr E’s adventures in Cartoonland
SUSAN DARLINGTON applauds a play that explores the role that imagination can play for children growing up through trauma
Stefan Davis in Please Right Back

Please Right Back
Leeds Playhouse

 

TWO people in dunce’s caps mutely hand out pencils to the audience. A voiceover explains that the story we’re about to watch could be based on real life, or it could be a work of fiction. It’s unclear how, or indeed if, the various elements relate but if you sit back and let 1927’s “dysfunctional family show” wash over you, it does begin to make sense.

Framed within the tropes of film noir, the multimedia play opens with Mr E (Stefan Davis) being instructed to hand over a briefcase to a mysterious Mr Jones. In scenes reminiscent of classic Hitchcock, the case is stolen and he must go on a special mission to retrieve it before he can return home to his family. 

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