Scenes from a small world brought to life

Creative collaboration and storytelling are at the heart of this quirky and surprising project

BEWLEY'S CAFE has a long association with the arts. There are the luminous Harry Clarke windows, installed in 2005, and the theatre on the second floor has been operating for more than 10 years. The building has also served as an informal gallery for Paddy Campbell, who rescued the cafe from ruin in the 1980s, and whose paintings and sculptures have adorned the stairwells ever since. Campbell formalised the relationship this week with the opening of his installation Small Worldin the lunchtime theatre space, which runs till the end of July.

The theatre space has been entirely darkened and six model-box sets invite audiences to peer inside into six self-contained worlds, where doll-sized sculptures are trapped in their own dramas. In a beach scene, bikini-clad bathers stretch out upon a strand; one woman twists her torso, discreetly trying to dress herself. In a Lilliputian scene from the cafe downstairs, a young lady turns away from the man who has just jilted her, the ring that once bound them forlorn on the table; a baby cries in a mother’s arms on the other side of the room. A scene slices through the carriage of a train, where commuters and travellers sit knee to knee, grey-faced in the harsh night-light. The characters will appear and reappear, move from scene to scene throughout the month, to give the illusion of a world that moves along the way ours does. We are encouraged to create our own stories.

The exhibition was conceived by Campbell more than six years ago, when he had the idea to reuse the small wax figures he used as models for his bronze sculptures. However in Small World, he is not the individual author. The sets are beautifully lit by Andrew Clancy, who uses mirrors, glass and skewed perspectives to give us multiple perspectives, and we are cast as voyeurs. Giuseppe Sannino's sound design – a muted melange of waves crashing, children crying, people laughing – creates a strange and sensual backdrop to the visual elements. The clothes – including some stunning dresses for the catwalk scene – were designed by Elaine Chapman, while an army of helpers, listed in the catalogue, enable Small Worldto come to life. It is this immense creative collaboration, and the storytelling at the heart of the project, that makes a theatre space the perfect home for Campbell's quirky and surprising project.

Small Worldruns at Bewley's Café Theatre daily until July 30th.