Little Otik

Who'd be a parent in 2008? A recent survey found that a third of parents don't let their eight-to-ten-year-olds out to play unsupervised for fear they'll be abducted. The opening moments of Vanishing Point's Little Otik on Saturday night neatly illustrated how attitudes of adults towards other people's kids may have changed, too.

Young actress Rebecca Smith sauntered down the centre aisle and gave a small air-filled ball to a man in the front row before shimmying onto the front of the stage and holding out her hands for it back. Rather than tossing the toy to her, he stood up and placed it in her hands. You can't be too careful.

Karl and Bozena Foster (Sandy Grierson and Louise Ludgate) desperately want to be parents, so much so that when he chops a tree stump into a vaguely human shape, something very odd happens. Their 'baby' begins to grow. And to eat. A lot.

This co-production between Vanishing Point and the National Theatre of Scotland is based on a surreal Czech film by Jan Svankmajer, but is also inspired by other films, TV programmes and recent news events, giving it the same kind of immediacy that made last year's Hidden at the RSAMD such a thrillingly relevant experience.

Co-adaptors Matthew Lenton and Sandy Grierson seem to be more interested in exploring the terrible mess parents have got themselves into over safety, in particular losing all perspective about the threat of paedophiles, than examining the fundamental desire to have a baby that leads the Fosters into their disastrous alliance with 'Little' Otik.

The Little Shop of Horrors-style schlock of the central plot provides grim laughs and the excuse for some wonderful stagecraft and ingenious sleight-of-hand, but in the end all of this actually serves as a distraction from what feels like the heart of the play: a story of isolation, loneliness and the breakdown of community.

As the dangerously precocious Elspeth Meadows, Rebecca Smith gives an extraordinary performance and carries the weight of the production on her shoulders. That she does so is all the more remarkable given the calibre of adult actors in the cast (which also includes Pauline Goldsmith and Ann Scott-Jones), and the fact that the piece was devised by a company that describes its approach to making theatre as 'chaotic'.

Some will undoubtedly feel uncomfortable watching such a young actress playing a character who, like Ellen Page's under-age vigilante in Hard Candy, understands only too well the potential power she has over adults. She is, however, simply the product of a paranoid age in which the response to the cautionary tales of Madeleine and Shannon has been irrational and, arguably, counter-productive.

Little Otik is, then, the story of well-meaning parents who unintentionally create a monster. And also a couple who adopt a tree stump.