Some of my most traumatising experiences have come hosting children’s parties: the Wardrobe Ensemble’s new show should come with a trigger warning. This devised play pitches us deep into the parcel-passing, E-number-addled tantrumscape of a weekend shepherding one’s five-year-old to three (three!) tots’ birthday bashes. Such is the burden borne by 34-year-old Xander, recently – and reluctantly – back in Bristol after a temporary escape to London, obliged to reconnect with old friends and painful memories across 48 primary-coloured hours of musical statues, puppet shows and small talk with people whose kids happen to know yours.
For much of Party Season’s 95-minute span, we’re in the territory of the sitcom Motherland, a broad comedy of manners about competitive parenting, sleeplessness and ideal-home envy. Co-directed by Helena Seneca and Jesse Jones, the production brings all that to fluid, sometimes expressionist life, as a protective mum (Jesse Meadows) breathes fire, adults become kids and kids become adults – and a mysterious children’s entertainer plays our spectral MC. There are too many sharply observed moments to mention, from party-game soundtracks stymied by dodgy Bluetooth to the spoilt brat of aspirational parents who “gets anxious when there’s no structure”.
I myself began to get anxious at the elusive structure of Party Season, which takes a while to declare its narrative hand, then is soon overstuffed with themes and plot strands. The main one concerns Xander’s unresolved feelings about his late dad, which, while tenderly depicted by son/father Tom England and father/son James Newton, seem only tenuously related to the ropey parenting that forms the bulk of the play’s dramatic action. Speaking of which, much as I enjoyed the neighbourhood WhatsApp pile-on so funny and deftly staged on Bronia Housman’s woozy balloon-patterned set, it strains credibility that Xander engages with it while simultaneously dealing with the nightmare of a missing child.
But if Party Season hangs together imperfectly, I left admiring the boldness of its vision, of children trapped in parents’ bodies, and parents (see Kerry Lovell’s fantastic monologue about the metamorphic marvels of the reproducing animal) reeling at what their bodies, and their lives, have become.
• Touring to Lowry, Salford, 12-16 May; Bristol Old Vic, 21-23 May
