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. 

This is where the parallels with 1940s cinema ends. Although he encounters characters who could be innocent or with sinister intentions along the way, they include a singing lion, two pirates in a whale’s stomach, and the barmaid in a psychedelic cocktail bar. These adventures are all conveyed back to his daughter Kim (Chardae Phillips) via a series of letters.

The staging, meanwhile, incorporates noirish lighting and costume with largely greyscale animation. With impeccable timing, the four real-life actors interact with Paul Barritt’s graphic novel-style moving images. Mr E’s son Davey is given the same character development as Kim and their mother (Jenny Wills), despite being a cartoon with a voice pre-recorded by Patrick Copley. And the madcap comedy of an arrow being shot clean through the head of a clown is enhanced by the fact it only exists in 2D.

The surreal logic of the show is grounded by pop culture references, which include everything from Disney, a Change.org petition, and The Wizard of Oz. This keeps it chained to a reality in which writer Suzanne Andrade explores the role that imagination can play for children growing up through trauma. With the shadowy NIPPP Academy, it also seems to touch on the last government’s relentless focus on maths and English at the expense of other subjects and life skills.

Andrade makes a rare misstep when the central meaning of the play is revealed, with the preachy tone sitting at odds with the lightness of touch shown throughout the rest of the script. This is nonetheless a minor blip in a show that is a moving and comic hymn to the power of creativity.

Touring until January 5 2025. Box office: (0113) 213-7700, leedsplayhouse.org.uk.