The Citizens Theatre

The Scotsman newspaper ****

“True love certainly conquers all, though, in TAG’s new children’s show Museum Of Dreams, presented in a gorgeous little hexagonal space specially created in the main rehearsal room of the Citizens’ Theatre. A curtain opens, and an excited audience of around 20 children are welcomed by a middle-aged caretaker (Keith Macpherson) who shows off his five exhibits, displayed in glowing old-fashioned glass cases around the walls. There’s a chair, a violin and banjo, a pair of tap shoes, an old-fashioned gramophone, and a mysterious box; and after the keeper nods off to sleep, a puppet girl in a yellow dress emerges from the box, and dreams and reality – puppet world and real world – begin to merge in ever more exciting and magical ways.

Somewhere at the heart of this lovely show, there’s a metaphor about friends or lovers finding one another despite coming from very different worlds. But whatever you make of the slightly sentimental happy ending, Ailie Cohen and Guy Hollands’s production is an absolutely enchanting magic toybox of a show, a child’s dream come true; and it makes a brilliant curtain-raiser to next week’s Imaginate children’s festival in Edinburgh, where it plays at the Brunton as part of the usual thrilling international programme for audiences under 16.”