‘Mr Bubbles’, personified by an English ex-soldier called Eran, works wonders with buckets, bowls and troughs of water and detergent, plus an assortment of implements, some of which we’ll find at home while others have been cunningly crafted.

Everyone – children, parents and caregivers – in the packed Gryphon Theatre can relate to the magical moment he revisits of creating his very first bubble. Apart from some conceptual conjuring with flat and solid bubbles, he produces a full range from minuscule to huge, playing with shapes and whimsical ideas like a bubble trampoline, ‘smoke’-filled bubbles and baby bubbles inside a mummy bubble.

He gets children up to balance bubbles on their hands, play pass-the-bubble, be endowed with an impressive bubble hairstyle and, as his penultimate trick, get encased in a bubble.

Meanwhile he solves the problem of how to create a cube bubble (which he insists on calling square). And especially in honour of the NZ Fringe, he offers a ‘Bubble Art’ segment, employing a circular lightbox and a sophisticate range of implements to create complex bubble structures.

After 50 minutes of being collectively entranced, it only takes one child to leap up and burst a bubble in the final lyrical sequence for the destructive urge to take over. I feel for Eran who accepts the inevitable without complaint. We oldies can only imagine the epic poetic finale he was going for, accompanied by the Strauss classic, Also sprach Zarathustra.

Probably the best element the kids take away is a realisation they only need a bowl of soapy water and their own bare hands to make their own bubble magic. Much fun will doubtless ensue – followed possibly by fights when siblings burst their bubbles. Ah well … It was ever thus.

“Like all things in life,” Eran has said sagely, early on, “bubbles come and bubbles go.” Now you see them, now you … 

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