Having interviewed a group of children aged 7-10, Chris Goode and Company went on to edit and stage the recordings – placing the text in a faux adult context. The cast is well over the voting age and the devised situations into which children’s conversations are put are immediately associated with the adult world: a discussion of favourite sweets turns into a job interview, with the panel asking ‘if you were  a bubble gum creature, what would you do?’, while thoughts about fears, terrors and ambitions are revealed over first dates and work-drinks. The setting (stage by Naomi Dawson) looks suspiciously like most working adults’ worst nightmare- a pretend-creative work space where employees come together for the weekly thought-shower. This recontextualisation gives a mature air to the words uttered by children, and with a prohibition on any child-like mannerism,  Goode does indeed induce a level of credibility only to then ridicule it: yes, adults are taken more seriously than kids, but given their general group behaviour it’s not entirely clear why. This point however is made the very first time the circumstances of a juvenile dialogue are shifted – and then simply repeated throughout the performance.

So much for the rightly critical approach to the adult population; the same treatment of the documentary material Goode used as a starting point however, is lacking. Instead, anything that children utter is treated as gold, and so Monkey Bars quickly turns into a succession of random stories, not many of which are much more than anecdotal because, as it turns out, kids can sometimes deliver thoughts and ideas which, while amusing, are simply not revealing. The performance juggles stories of half-term troubles and juvenile crushes with confessions of a less than perfect family life and cultural clashes, but isn’t concerned with organising this charming material in a structural way. Monkey Bars therefore regrettably begins and ends at the washed out idea of making the adults listen to what the kids have to say; in that it makes a sweeping generalisation that adults never take anyone under the age of 18 seriously and generally think of kids as giber-gabbering small people.

This slightly casual approach to verbatim that could perhaps be defined as ‘best of’ dramaturgy (conduct the interviews, then select the most interesting parts, regardless of whether and how they relate to each other), is not without its dangers. When the only recognisable umbrella subject is found somewhere along the lines of ‘listen to the children’, deciding that the only two chapters on religious upbringing should be about Muslim children who might harbour specific views on Christians, is borderline irresponsible – and combined with a predominantly Caucasian cast shows a lack of respect for connotations that might be derived. Domestic violence is also treated as a side-note – a story that’s perhaps accidentally made to provoke condolence, rather than responsibility. With these surprising possible conclusions beaming their ugly heads every once in a while it seems that Monkey Bars has fallen victim to the very notion it attempted to dispel. Masked as entertainment, and packaged into giggle rather than drama inducing paper, children’s narratives, confessions and musings are not treated as a serious enough dramatic material to propel a reaction deeper than an ‘aaaaaw’.

For an alternative view, read Lois Jeary’s 5 star review from the Edinburgh Fringe.