Kind (Child) is the third part in a trilogy by visceral theatre troupe Peeping Tom. Created by Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier, who met as dancers with Belgian company Ballets C de la B, it joins Vader (Father) and Moeder (Mother) in its aim to break taboos associated with the ‘unholy’ trinity of family members through a highly personalised dance-theatre language. 

Kind’s co-creators, who are also parents, wished to examine the archetypes of childhood. Unlike their other works which have indoor settings, Kind unfolds in the treacherous forest of fairy tale, where capricious spirits infest the natural world. “We question from the start why this kid is alone,” says Chartier: “is she an orphan, or has she been abandoned..?” The Romantic notion of childhood innocence seems misplaced in a modern conflictive, egotistical territory, where violence and sex is ever present and has become banal. 

Image-rich scenes and twisted uncanny movement suggest the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch or the macabre maniacal world of the Quay Brothers, pioneers in stop motion animation. The child’s insatiable physical and emotional needs are expressed in the inspired casting of voluptuous mezzo-soprano Eurudike De Beul, whose operatic voice brings Wagnerian melodrama to a child’s bawling and self-centredness. 

Yet Kind was notable in its early trajectory as a theatre piece, and seemed both underweight in characterisation and theme, and overstretched in narrative. Much seemed focused on creating an ambience; a forest and a child lost is well-trodden territory in literature, yet unlike Alice in her Wonderland, interactions here seemed incidental rather than influential, and the child’s perspective too fragile.