one4review | On 10, Aug 2026

Toy Theatre is not an artform that has stood the test of time. Once the toy of choice for the artistically minded child in the 1800s as well as a popular performance medium, the tiny stages combined the joy of puppetry with the miniature appeals of a dolls house. However, the medium has seen a revival in recent years and one of the bright lights of this new era of the petit playhouse is Chicago-based company Toy Atlas Theater with their adaptation of  Italo Calvino’s postmodern classic novel Invisible Cities.

The show, like the book, is framed around an imagined conversation between the legendary figures of Kublai Khan of the Mongol empire and Italian explorer Marco Polo. The story, such as it is, consists of brief beautifully evocative prose poems describing imaginary, and often impossible cities – cities that float in the sky balanced on spindly legs, cities built entirely underground, cities inspired by dreams or the memory of dreams.

Each city the show includes is illustrated by the two performers, Matthew Gawryk and Dan Kerr-Hobert with a beautifully handmade object which through opening or unfolding or otherwise transforming into a tiny encapsulation of the city as it is described. Two cameras give a live feed of the micro artworks, from puppets held up by matches on a cigar tin, to a tissue box where each tissue has a hidden meaning. The show combines delightful and inventive use of live projection, puppetry, paper mechanics and living sculpture with the dense, dreamlike prose of the novel to create a series of beautiful and delicate moments.

Every part of this show, no matter how small, from the words spoken, to the music, to the staging feels as much the product of hours and hours of careful and considered craftsmanship as the miniature cities themselves. The effect is as much an experience as a performance, the audience led gently through the dream worlds by a pair of expert guides.

A final note is that the extra time provided at the end of the runtime to allow the audience to come and inspect the works closer up and ask questions of the creators is a lovely and generous touch.

*****

Reviewed by Tom

theatre at C ARTS | C venues | C alto

19:30 (1 hour)

5th-30th (not 17th)