Elf Lyons @ Pleasance Courtyard

Elf Lyons' new show is powered by a beautiful intention: to re-connect with the spirit of play. For both herself and her audience, she endeavours to find a route back to the lost world of childhood play, of absorption and easy intimacy. As a child, horses were her thing in a love shared by her siblings, and they become the prism by which she re-enters that world.

Lyons’ horse performances are rather splendid – stiff arms, wrists tucked – and each is distinctive: Biscuit, the formidable narrator of the opening; Half-pint, back from the war and dreaming in the sun; Chubby, an affable Exmoor pony. Are these the horse characters she played as a child, excavated from the murk of memory? Imaginary friends or creatures may be familiar to us from saccharine Pixar films, but their re-animation live on stage is newly thrilling.

The thrill is partly due to the synergy created by the verbatim accounts spliced into the narrative – memories from her siblings and her mother about childhood play. Her mother describes watching her sister trying and failing to play, and remembers her saying sadly, 'I couldn't get back there'.

Lyons slides easily in and out of roles, with a nicely comic cameo from Pegasus as an awkward teen, and his harried mother, Medusa, irritated by the constant inconvenience of turning everyone to stone. There are some elements that seem a little arbitrary, but the assurance and fluidity of her moves between the complex collaged pieces is such that we largely don't question them.

As the show ends, Lyons invites us to join her in play – and people flood down to the stage in answer to her call. It's a moving finale, and in its own small way, a chance to get back to the lost world.

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Elf Lyons: Horses, Pleasance Courtyard (Above), until 25 Aug, 9.20pm, £15