It’s still early in Emma Rice’s tenure at the artistic helm of Shakespeare’s Globe, but I’m beginning to form a theory: namely, that she is clearly skilled at staging work in a venue of this size and shape, but shows little awareness of what the Globe might actually be for. What was the purpose of all that time and effort reconstructing an Elizabethan playhouse on more or less its original site, if it is simply to house anything that happens to fit? In past seasons, the original work staged at the Globe has generally consisted of dramatisations of major historical episodes/topics, or large-cast city comedies. A piece about a lost cat does not conspicuously follow in this tradition.

I’m being overly dismissive. Michael Morpurgo’s 2005 children’s novel (which he here adapts with Rice) tells of the clearance of coastal villages in Devon in 1943-4 for training exercises for the D-Day landings, and in particular of the little-known mess designated Operation Tiger, in which several hundred American servicemen died. (The title’s 946 refers to the number of fatalities.) Yet this is secondary in terms of onstage focus to the everyday life of 12-year-old Lily, one of those moved out of the village of Slapton, her friendship with London evacuee Barry, and her and a couple of G.I.s’ search for her missing cat Tips. Slapton isn’t even evacuated until the interval, making the entire first half basically an hour-plus of setup.

This is technically not a Globe production but a visit from Rice’s former company Kneehigh, and it features all the now-familiar Kneehigh trademarks: music (principally a decorous form of jump blues), meta-theatrical cleverness, actor Mike Shepherd in implausible drag (as the aged Lily), and – although less here than usual – a fundamental undertow of sadness beneath the onstage capers. Katy Owen is puckishly endearing as young Lily, but Ncuti Gatwa and Nandi Bhebhe as the GIs are sold short by a script which seldom engages with the obviously significant racial dimension. The material itself may resonate more deeply in Kneehigh’s Cornish base, but on London’s Bankside it’s simply a romp with occasional, dutiful sombre faces, and which is soon over, to no clear point.

Written for the Financial Times.