Forum's Not So Simple Success

The play may be called Kid-Simple, but the premise is anything but: a young prodigy invents a machine that hears things humans never could discern, and when it is stolen, takes a mythical quest with a boy virgin for company in order to get it back. Did we mention the whole thing's done in the style of an old fashioned radio play - only live, so we can see the action behind the scenes?

Forum Theatre and Dance is setting their sights high, and are up to the challenge of producing this quirky work. In the play, Moll (Maggie Glauber), the genius in question, and her parents (Fiona Blackshaw and Kevin Boggs), frequently come together as a family in order to listen to the local serialized radio drama. This becomes a springboard for how Kid-Simple's action progresses - not only do Blackshaw and Boggs take on the alter egos of stars of the radio show, but the sound effects that punctuate their program weave their way into the play's main story as well (as do plot elements from the radio drama).

The frequently zany side effects (at one point, Burgess goes to war with the show's narrator, embodied by an appropriately uppity Jjana Valentiner, punctuating actions like walking with obnoxious helicopter noises) give the work an appealingly whimsical tone, but it still works when things get bleak, such as during the play's onomatopoetic climax.