Elf Lyons has made a beautiful show about horses – and particularly about the way she used to pretend to be a horse as a child.

 

Adopting an absurdly grand, grown-up voice she introduces herself – or her horse self, with a long neck, hooves instead of hands and a twitchy not quite human awareness of the world around her.

 

It’s an absolutely astonishing piece of mime.   Elf brings us a horse-led history of horses, with race horses, retired war horses and the tired put-upon creatures who take tiny posh children around fields.

 

Horses have changed human history, she says, in her snorty horse voice, all the time trotting, cantering and horse walking around the stage.  There’s not a moment in the show when Elf loses her horse consciousness. Her body becomes absurdly horse like, nostrils flared, eyes flashing – you can almost see the steam rising in the morning sun.

 

She visits the realm of the gods to bring us Pegasus the winged horse – but he is simultaneously a shy little boy, trying on shoes in a shoe shop.  Elf brings us monsters – gorgons, Medusa – who are both mythological creatures and adults, doing mysterious things.

 

The other characters in the story are often absurdly sweet or inexplicably angry and cruel – giving us a child-like view of the baffling world of the adults around them.

 

It’s more theatrical than truly comic – although there are laughs in the frequent unexpected switches between authority and innocence.

 

Little Elf, running around a field, pretending to be a horse, is at the heart of this story.  She didn’t fit in as a child and she didn’t always understand what was going on around her.  But she had a loving family, whose voices we hear in recordings.

 

Her sister, the dressage horse, is now a doctor.   Her brother, who used to be a horse who pretended to be a lion is all grown up as well.   But Elf, the clown, still wants to be a horse running around the fields of childhood – and she wants us all to join her.

 

There’s a joyful finale – where the audience gets to play with Elf – and the hay bales, poles and broomsticks on stage become an arena for those who want to join in to trot, canter and gallop around.