‘Books!’, by Tit For Tat

Review from: Unit 15, Circus City festival, Bristol; 22nd Oct 2023

Four mega book nerds throw around paperbacks, cheesy jokes, bizarre facts and hardcover volumes with equal abandon in this family show from Tit For Tat. All the promo I’ve seen for the show features it as an outdoor performance, but today it was presented in the black box theatre space of Unit 15 as part of the Circus City festival programme. Being the middle of October, this was no doubt a wise move!

The indoor space creates intensity – music feels louder, ladders seem taller, fire seems more dramatic, and lines of dialogue seem cringier. Audience members gravitate to the rows of seats instead of sitting up close to the action on foam floor mats provided, and the theatre set-up of ‘audience space’ and ‘performance space’ also seems to restrict the interactions between us. This particular trade off for a warm dry bum is a bit of a shame, as each of the cast members (Ryan Murphy, Maia Ayling, Charles Brockbank, and Max Gabarre-Grindrod) show ample capacity for the improvisational engagements that can create a heightened atmosphere of entertainment in outdoor work. No-one is thrown off their stride for a second when my toddler decides to stand up and hand back a book she has been holding, and their distribution of character bookmarks to take home is a lovely touch.

It’s a fun enough half hour, with the added bonus of a further 30 minute stay-and-play session where the circus toys come out and everyone gets to try their own hand at different juggling props. My 2.5 year old is a particular fan of diabolo, and also took a shine to two green clubs and a bowler hat. The cast members have all returned in branded red t-shirts (there is a 15 minute break between the two sections) to demonstrate and assist with the different activities.

My favourite moment in the show is when its premise is knowingly revealed in a line about ‘sharing the thrill of reading’. Of course, the thrills of reading are internal and the opposite of spectacular. So this goofy book club have pulled out all the stops to recruit new members by bringing to life the different book genres and histories in the most dramatic and physical ways possible.

The humour, broad characterisation and obvious pro-reading message – plus the activity session afterwards – makes me think that primary schools should be booking up Books! in their droves. Although advertised for ‘all ages’ in the festival programme, I suspect it will be the 6-10year olds who get the biggest kicks out of the frantic facts and silly sentences. Not to mention the ‘cigar-box’-style book juggling, precarious ladder-balancing, and ominous book-burning.