A Delightful, Lighthearted Exploration of ‘Childhood’

To paraphrase Picasso, it takes only a few years for an artist to learn to paint like the old masters. It takes a lifetime to paint like a child.

Jackie Planeix and Tom Crocker, the husband-and-wife performance duo Blue Palm, have been performing their acclaimed interdisciplinary shows in both Europe and the United States since the mid-1980s. After the birth of their daughter in 1993, Planeix and Crocker have increasingly turned their energies to children’s theater pieces.

In “Childhood,” at the Falcon Theatre, Planeix and Crocker seek to convey the very essence of what it means to be a child. That’s a tall order, but these disciplined dancer-performers meet the challenge with few missteps.

Intellectually challenging, yet playful enough to keep younger children involved, this immaculately staged pastiche has superb design elements, particularly the uncredited sound, a poignant waterfall of music and children’s voices that trickles soothingly in the background. Crocker’s scenic design is simple yet striking. Entering the theater, we see a stage suffused with three pools of colored light. Bathed in a yellow glow, two books of fairy tales occupy the down-stage platform. A blue pyramid topped with a ball, and a pink cone bristling with children’s toys and lollipops, flank opposite sides of the stage.

The lights go down, then flash on again to display a child (Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, the couple’s daughter) standing on the down-stage platform, twirling a globe of the world. It’s a moving visual metaphor, characteristic of this show’s compositionally pristine staging.

A small corps of child performers is incorporated, charmingly, throughout. The free-ranging “plot” consists of four separate segments. In the prologue, two angels (Planeix and Crocker), who are waiting to descend to Earth and be born, look down from the heavens on children playing below.

Angels have been overworked in the media since “It’s a Wonderful Life” and beyond. However, when these curious celestial beings discover the childish pleasure of candy, it’s an adorable moment.

Funny and poetical Interlude 1 covers the arc of childhood, in two-year intervals, from age 3 to 17. In the Peter Pan-ish Interlude 3, a grown man returns to his old playground and discovers his best friend, frozen in time at age 6, awaiting him. The child performers are amply represented in Interlude 3, quick-moving sketches of childhood archetypes, from playground bully to starry-eyed dreamer.

When Planeix, Crocker and the children take their curtain call, a cascade of white balloons showers the stage. It’s a fitting ending for this lighthearted, pure-spirited show.

*

“Childhood,” Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank. Saturdays, 1 and 3 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m. Ends Oct. 23. $12.50. (818) 955-8101. Running time: 1 hour.