scotsman review of 'hanging by a thread' from 2009

"IT'S MORE THAN 130 YEARS SINCE ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON INVENTED THE LAND OF THE COUNTERPANE, IN HIS 'CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES'. BUT I DOUBT IF THE IMAGE OF A BEDSPREAD AS A WORLD, or a powerful landscape has ever been given more vivd theatrical expression than in The Ding Foundation's 'Hanging by a Thread' which played briefly at the Traverse this weekend. Set around a big bed covered in a ragged quilt, this fiercely female hour-long show uses bunches of unravelled wool, pieces of patchwork, stray rags, and fragments of ribbed knitting, to conjure up the figure of an old lady who lies dreaming through her last days on the bed. She is tended by a shy puppet-daughter in a red dress, who often disappears, only to reappear in the dream landscape of her mother's bedspread, as it gradually grows small houses, and rivers and mountains, and gives birth – with the odd lurch and groan – to a tiny menagerie of animal and human figures. The shows visual imagery and it's little narrative detours are almost too rich and complex for such a short piece. But there's no doubt that co-creators and performers Hannah Marshall and Amelia Pimlott create some astonishing images of death and re-birth here. And their use at the end of the full human figure, to symbolise a final moment of freedom from “Mother Earth” is intensely moving; as well as thought-provoking about where the rich world of puppetry is heading next"
- Joyce macmillan