Pwdin is 12 years old. He thinks he’s fat (“You’re not fat!” exclaim the adults). Petula is his 15-year-old cousin, who has grown so thin she has disappeared. No one can find her. Pwdin is in love with Petula and determined to find her. His quest takes him into space. Here, he meets astronaut Neil Armstrong, a variation of Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince, and Petula’s parents (pop stars called Beyoncé Clark and Ed Sheeran). Travelling on the back of a “flea of knowledge” called Gillian Anderson, he takes a tour of planets Petula might have visited, including one that is home to the dead and another where children wait to be born (meanwhile, on Earth, Pwdin’s vampire-actress stepmother and father are busy making him a brother).
Translator/adapter Daf James recognises, in a programme note, that some people might call Fabrice Melquiot’s 2007 play “absurd”. For James, though, “it’s incredibly realistic in the way it deals with trauma and the confusion of growing up”. Whether absurd or realistic, there’s certainly a tremendous playfulness in the way that Melquiot smudges boundaries, actual and imaginary (enhanced by Jean Chan’s all-black design of a series of ball pits, spattered with Will Monks’s drop-down videos). Characters move between auditorium and stage, address the audience directly, comment on the action; Pwdin’s Earthbound family follow his progress, squinting through a giant telescope; space itself takes on physical form and delivers its opinions. In this co-production from National Theatre of Wales and Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, with August012, even language is mutable: single sentences flow seamlessly through English, French and Welsh (projected, with translations, on to side screens, they are easy to follow, once you get used to the switching).
Under Mathilde López’s direction, the patterned chaos of Melquiot’s text sometimes lacks momentum; scenes need trimming and crisping up. Nonetheless, her six-strong ensemble delivers well-balanced, committed performances; among them, recent graduate Dewi Wykes deserves special mention for his out-of-this-world Pwdin.
