Cornish artist Matthew Robins combines shadow puppets and songs to tell stories about animals, monsters, the sea, love, and death. Joined on-stage by puppeteer Tim Spooner, this home-made variety show features the shadow-puppet adventures of regular characters Flyboy and Mothboy, as well as some new characters for 2025. There will be made-up games, jokes about skeletons, songs about sausages, competitive audience puppet-making (with prizes), and it will all be NICE!
“Full of loss and unrequited love, but with a surreal and occasionally snappy humour . . . The whole thing feels like watching a silent movie in which every aspect has been created by a wayward child genius.” – The Guardian
“It’s easy to see why audiences and theatremakers alike are beguiled by this kooky West Country artist. . . Robins’ homespun tales mix the everyday with the surreal and are delivered in a chatty, cosy style . . . illustrated with nothing more than an overhead projector and pieces of cardboard” – The Stage
“What drives his miniaturist universe is the romance of friendship and, as a corollary, an underlying longing to belong. It’s a place of boyhood crushes, loneliness and gentle obsessions that contain an implied tolerance for taking people as they are.” – The Times
