Perhaps Miss Tong Tong really was "one of the hits of the 1997 Berlin Children's Festival"; but if so, it's lost something in the translation.

Technically imaginative but ultimately unengaging, this two-man show from Theater Waidspeicher and Puppentheater Erfurt will make a good outing for students eager to learn about performance. Actors Stefan Wey and Thomas Mielentz work magical transformations on a few props, evoke vivid pictures of invisible people and places and also provide most of the sound effects.

The plot, set on a train-station platform, centres on the durable friendship between a lanky baker and a tuba-voiced mechanic as they separately and jointly fantasise about the eponymous, once-seen woman they both love. Their bits of conflict and fantasy-play are often entertaining, but the sentimental longing at the play's centre is just too intangible to carry any audience with it, let alone a young one.

Funnily, while the targeted age range for this one is given as seven to 13, our three-year-old got noisily caught up in the onstage action (sorry, lads). That is much more than could be said for her nearly-seven sister, or for their dad.