A Tribute Of Sorts

Oddball cousins Ivan and Juniper are staging a tribute to the strange and untimely deaths of 26 infants. In between the gore Juniper pines with inappropriate cousin love and a more than slightly disturbing hair collection, while the pair re-enact alphabetised infant deaths of the less-than-ordinary variety.

There are strokes of pure genius in A Tribute Of Sorts: the boy who falls in love with the moon, leading to death by puddle; an exploding baby head; and a paper-puppet kiddie-murder, complete with speech bubbles, among them.

But with Juniper and Ivan engaging in repeated monologues describing the narrative, A Tribute Of Sorts breaks a cardinal rule: show, don't tell. While amusing enough to garner some hearty laughs, this recurring explication of plot leaves the audience with little to do and – ironically for a show based on warped imagination – leaves precious little to the imagination.

That said, both Emily Curtin and Dash Kruck are truly excellent as teenage cousins with a penchant for the macabre, largely making up for this lack of subtlety. The production is beautifully staged, kitsch enough to feel as though you've wandered upon some sepia-toned world inhabited by characters plucked from a Wes Anderson movie, but not so kitsch it's irritably quaint. Ultimately A Tribute Of Sorts is one-of-a-kind theatre, endearing and strange in equal measures.

Running at La Boite until Saturday 10 November