It’s Dark Outside – Perth Theatre Company

Overview

The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer won over Sydney Festival audiences in 2011 with its charming, low-fi futuristic world wrought through live action, animation, puppetry, and song. Now that production's creators return with It's Dark Outside, which uses similar ingredients to tell the tale of an old man suffering from dementia.

His Sundown Syndrome, which makes him wander off as evening approaches, here becomes a poetic Wild West landscape where puffs of cloud escape from him and a butterfly-net-wielding tracker is hot on his heels. For anyone who's watched a loved one succumb to Alzheimer's or fretted over the inadequacy of their own memory, it's sure to be a moving 60 minutes.

Tim Watts, Arielle Gray, and Chris Isaacs are masterfully delicate puppeteer-performers, and Rachael Dease provides a haunting score.

It's Dark Outside is part of Sydney Festival's About an Hour series of shows, each $35. Read our list of the 12 best things to see at the Sydney Festival in 2013 here.