The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer

The moment when this aching, enchanting show tips over from being simply great to exceptional is easy to spot. Towards the end, a simple white dot of light floats across a screen. And people start sobbing.

It is a testament to Australian theatre company Weeping Spoon’s skilful storytelling that through the solitary performer melding animation, songs, puppetry and live action, you care deeply about what is essentially a bike light dangling from a stick.

But before we get to the sobbing, there is a grand adventure. The seas have risen. Most of mankind has drowned. And Alvin Sputnik has just lost his wife. Her soul has drifted to the bottom of the now endless ocean. All this in the first five minutes.

All alone in this soggy world, Sputnik undertakes a mission to locate an underwater cavern that could save the world. Armed with a diving suit and a finite amount of air he plunges into the inky depths. Dancing whales, strange lights, and Giorgio Moroder await.

With its mixture of derring-do, humour and sadness, ...Alvin captures the melancholy and wonder of Pixar’s finest moments—the first ten minutes of Up, the wordless opening act of WALL·E—and creates a beautiful meditation on love, loss and longing.

And like Pixar, the show knows that it is not operatic gestures but the accumulation of little things that moves us: a submerged disco ball, a family together again, a single light in a dark ocean.

It will broadside you and blow your heart wide open.