Grown Ups Explores Adult Chaos at Edinburgh Children’s Festival

Absurdist Comedy Explores How Adults Handle Chaos

Brussels-based Compagnie Barbarie have descended upon the Traverse for the 2025 Edinburgh International Children’s Festival with a laugh-out-loud study of adult problem solving. ‘Grown Ups’ follows the fortunes – well, the misfortunes – of four grown-ups going about whatever it is they do with their day.

For some, it seems to involve lots of sticky tape, whilst others do curious things with extension cables, ladders, mobile phones and the occasional power tool. All begins in relative tranquillity, as Sarah Vangeel, Liesje De Backer, Amber Goethals & Lotte Vaes cross the stage about their inscrutable business all set to a whistling soundtrack. The inexplicable snippets are funnier than they should be on the surface, but that’s a testament to the cast’s innate sense of the absurd and Karolien De Bleser’s elegantly timed direction.

And then things go wrong.

The inexplicable snippets are funnier than they should be on the surface, but that’s a testament to the cast’s innate sense of the absurd and Karolien De Bleser’s elegantly timed direction.

Slapstick Escalation With a Theatre-Within-Theatre Twist

Sooner rather than later, a single intrusive thought brings a power cable into contact with the glass currently being held underneath the leak and kaboom. Finally they get the lights back up and…it’s then the grown-ups notice the audience.

Things only get madder from that point onwards, as the pressure to put on ‘theatre’ for the audience vies for attention with their swiftly deteriorating infrastructure. The result is madcap, well-choreographed, bonkers fun, laced with a little clowning, circus-skill and a touch of old-fashioned slapstick.

On top of this, whilst most of the group arm themselves with sticks, sponges, ladders and lots of tape, the fourth adult indulges in an escalating barrage of genuinely hilarious ‘theatre’ spanning Chekhov, modern dance, and putting tiny Mexican hats on vegetables. It’s all done with such innocent delight that it’s impossible not to guffaw. Ultimately however, none of the grown ups prove entirely immune to the urge to perform, and the results are varyingly daft.

The result is madcap, well-choreographed, bonkers fun, laced with a little clowning, circus-skill and a touch of old-fashioned slapstick.

All the while, things are getting worse: Karolien De Bleser certainly knows how to direct a mounting calamity. Yet, whilst there’s lots to admire and laugh at throughout, the merry deus-ex-machina finale is overlong without adding enough to the story. Otherwise, however, this surreal misadventure offers an endlessly entertaining experience which posits two philosophical questions: is anyone really an adult?… And what precisely is theatre?