There are sections of Moving Target that will delight and intrigue audiences. The result of a collaboration between Australian director Benedict Andrews and German playwright Marius von Mayenburg, Moving Target is a mix of drama, movement and sound that is both astounding and frustrating.

It is clear that von Mayenburg and Andrews are responding to contemporary uncertainties and how fear can make a terrorist out of anyone. The narrative is not clear at first. It is hinted at, and gradually built on through a sense of unease and anxiety. This is done through a series of devices; rhythms are built up through games of hide and seek; speeches punctuated by bodies smacking loudly into the set walls; amazing lighting and sound design, finger painting sessions. Actors alternate between childish and adult personas, with the grown-ups being the most uncertain and fearful.

The cast is a fantastic ensemble. Andrews and von Mayenburg wrote the piece with a specific group in mind, and their selection is spot on. Alison Bell, Julie Forsyth, Matthew Whittet and Rita Kalnejais handle both childish innocence and adult concerns well. Hamish Michael adds a discordant note as a more recalcitrant adolescent character that doesn’t always agree with the narrative presented by the others. Robert Menzies, whose sunglasses appear to be welded on, is the most adult and menacing of the troupe, but still undercuts this with a sense of juvenile uncertainty.

Moving Target is entertaining and inventive. It’s a shame, then, that it’s less than the sum of its parts. There are times when it works really well, particularly in the second half when the tensions that have been hinted at are brought to the fore through the narrative of children being suspected of unspeakable things. The build up to this point, however, tends to get sidetracked by seemingly endless theatrical exercises. It’s almost as though they forgot to warm up backstage before the show, because so much of it reminded me of the stuff they made us do in high school drama classes. You know the kind of thing I mean: “Make yourself into a tiiiny little ball. Be a little speck of dust. Now…Be a tree!”

The narrative is an interesting one. There are rhythms that are built up, only to be interrupted and lost in all the wrong places. If they’d just cut back a little of the flab, and maybe scrap one or two games of hide-and-seek (which is a great motif, but starts to lose its impact after the seventh or eighth go), Moving Target would be a terrific piece of theatre. It’s the lack of tautness, in a piece that purports to be about tension and fear, that ultimately lets things down.