Hoof!

After its pre-Christmas tour was cut short by lockdown, Theatr Iolo’s outdoor family show Hoof! finally gets back on the road, with collaborators Kitsch and Sync providing a sunny, funny post-lockdown treat. Three mischievous dancing deer emerge from hibernation – something with which the young audience immediately identifies after the hardest of winters – and set about finding ways of enjoying their new-found freedom.

Kitsch and Sync is a well-known trio on Wales’ festival-theatre circuit, blending a mixture of dance and comedic performance. This production provides a welcome opportunity to see the company centre stage.

There’s little narrative to Hoof!, being more a series of skits, but it’s brimming with character. Kim Noble and Kylie Ann Smith’s more senior deer are intent on providing some quality entertainment – dance, magic and a musical medley – while Cêt Haf’s cheeky fawn, presumably the family’s little sibling, vies for the audience’s attention, inadvertently causing mayhem around her. Like the best comedy performers, Noble, Smith and Haf are expert in their craft, pulling at the threads for comic effect (their tap routines are especially impressive).

Lee Lyford’s direction ensures the slick chaos of Kitsch and Sync’s promenade style is retained, but now with added emotion.

Playing out of a gorgeous carnival theatre stage (designed by Carl Davies), there is a sense of something magical coming to town – just as some normality returns to the watching families’ own lives. Witnessing these animal characters rediscovering the world around them is both fun and surprisingly profound.