Lionboy is a story with real heart. Complicite’s production captures and expresses that heart through great writing, compelling performances, and clever effects, bursts of dramatic movement and moments of fragile stillness. There’s a very tangible, ever present pulse which accompanies almost every scene, heard as a quickening or slowing beat, a heartbeat, played out on various percussion instruments, by a mad professor type musician, who is ever present on stage.

Theatre is often dramatic, but rarely do I feel aware of my quickening pulse during a chase scene or an angry, impassioned speech. Lionboy made me conscious of my heart in my throat. It’s not unusual for a piece of drama to be emotive, but here the expression ‘tugging at the heart strings’ felt quite real. The hero, Charlie, named the Lionboy for his ability to communicate with cats, faces moments of extreme loneliness and fear as he searches for his kidnapped parents. His heart yearns for the comfort of his family and is angered by the plight of his captive lion friends, whose hearts in turn long for their African home. The audience are called on to respond to those emotions, so when Charlie’s strength and determination shine through and we see his lion heart grow, there’s a united swelling of the audience’s heart that corresponds.

One of the story’s central themes is unmistakably that of the power of language, speech and sound and much of the strength of the emotion and dramatic intensity that the play is able to elicit is due to the use of sound and noise, with great emphasis on how it is made, where and how it is directed and projected. The beating of the drums is the constant sound track, the microphone through which the Chief Executive proclaims the power of the Corporation gives a level of detachment and steel to the words, and the lion’s rib cage rattling and heart-beat-raising roar deliver a message of defiance that has potency beyond words.

Lionboy is by no means all weighty themes and darkness and much praise should be given to how much fun it is too! The humour and entertainment comes from the larger than life characters in spectacular costumes, using crazy props, delivering witty lines and travelling, climbing, crossing, wading through and suspending their bodies above the quirky set in all manner of athletic, gymnastic and acrobatic ways. For much of the tale Charlie travels amidst a troop of performers on a circus ship, and true to the spirit of old fashioned showmanship, it’s the physical feats of the cast which allow this production to feel full of animation and wonder without the need of high-tech special effects.

There are a few furry gloves and pairs of ears to be seen at times, but for the most part it’s the deft physicality of the actors which makes us believe that there are a host of cats of the alley, both of the domestic and big cat variety, on the stage. In particular, Adetomiwa Edun, in the role of Charlie, deftly metamorphoses into the young lion with a twist of his body, a turn of his head and a raised paw. When he roars, the sound comes from the lion, not from an actor pretending to be an animal.

Lionboy, originally written as a trilogy of books by Zizou Corder, has been read and is loved by millions of children – and Stephen Spielberg, who can spot a decent tale, has bought the film rights. There’s no doubt that it’s a great story, and Complicite have taken that great story and given us a magical, captivating, thrilling and fun show.