Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
March 8, 2018

The dark stage is almost empty; a blank canvas awaiting a picture. The girl and boy who are to paint the scene, wander in, and immediately beguile us. It may be the fragility of their youth, highlighted with braided hair, balloons, and a sunshine yellow turtleneck, or the carefree absence of shoes, or perhaps it’s because we know they are about to endure the worst three days of their brief lives.

Author and director Carly Wijs has drawn from the heinous Beslan school siege of September 2004 to create this challenging show as an impetus for adults to discuss the topic of terrorism with children. Here, the show succeeds. This is nothing, if not a conversation starter.

By linguistic definition, we are in the ‘Us’ camp before we even meet the ‘Them’, but it is not semantics that cements our hour-long subscription to Team ‘Us’. Throughout the humorous and harrowing tale, the story arc is underpinned by a dichotomy as common as it is ancient – good versus evil, and we are on the side of the children.

Spatial familiarity and playfulness between the pair intrigues, and a beautifully delivered statistical who’s who paints a...