Review: Five things that will keep kids engaged in CTC’s ‘Babble Lab’

Oopsie.

The scientist in the white lab coat and protective eyewear is experimenting with vowels and consonants when a mistake happens that causes some of the letters to pop up in unusual places. Some fly away. Others kerplunk. But soon, most are caught and swallowed whole.

They then bounce around in a bubbly alphabet soup in her stomach that we see on a screen before burbling back up through her mouth.

Baba and waa and oo.

Autumn Ness plays the totally committed (but only slightly mad) scientist in “Babble Lab,” a 45-minute experience that starts in the lobby of the Cargill Theater at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis as she walks through, amplifying sounds from the bodies of audience members. She then leads us into the theater for this inventive and immersive world premiere staged by Sarah Agnew.

“Babble” invites toddlers and young people to explore their own language development.

Designer Michael Sommers came out of retirement to create the playful set, which is a jerry-rigged sound-capturing lab machine with tubes, wheels and lights. It also has a trash can that’s like an external stomach where the scientist throws things that get garbled before coming out clear again.

Here are five takeaways from the show.

1. “Babble” takes place in a sonic playground of floating letters projected on a screen. It is loaded with fragmentary sounds and nonsense words. Yet we fully understand the underlying emotions and meaning of the scientist’s utterances. We know astonishment in bright expressions, for example, or crestfallen disappointment. We know the cadence that follows from a sad face or, in a happy moment, the glee that starts in the eyes and melts the face (or is it the other way around?).

2. The show captures the rules of grammar and clear speech. The concept behind the show is not new. Silent films have guttural and sundry sounds by Foley artists that provide aural correlates to characters’ feelings and experiences. Similarly, singers at the Cirque du Soleil shows deliver in an invented language that follows Romance language precepts. In “Babble,” the influences include Eastern European Slavic syntax but also communication that cuts across species.

3. “Babble” provides a kind of probe into sounds. Literally. You know how doctors send a camera into your body to check your health? Well, imagine a scientist sending an aural probe down your throat and onto your vocal cords. (Jorge Cousineau designed the show’s inventive projections that include a closeup of the back of Ness’ throat, something that startled children reacted viscerally at Sunday’s performance.)

4. Which gets us to the fact that “Babble” is interactive. Not officially, anyway. But it’s aimed at kids from toddlers on, and they are honest with their reactions, which they are also kind enough to freely (and volubly) share. Kudos to Ness for not ignoring the audience’s reactions. She either incorporates them or directs them away. At Sunday’s show, there were dueling calls from little audience members about what the scientist should do with a butterfly floating on a screen (one kid kept suggesting that she “catch it in the bottle” while another simply said “eat it”).

Who: Created and performed by Autumn Ness. Directed by Sarah Agnew.

Where: Children’s Theatre Company, 2400 3rd Av. S., Mpls.

When: 12:30 p.m. Wed., 11 a.m., 2 p.m. & 4 p.m. Sat. & Sun. Ends April 14.