TORONTO - As a playwright, Florence Gibson has always favoured a language all her own -- a language that by her own confession was strongly influenced by the comic strips her dad used to read her as a child.

Now, having enjoyed considerable success in the world of grown-up theatre, Gibson's taken a bit of a break to focus on telling kids a few stories of her own -- and not surprisingly, she's using an unconventional language to do it.

This time out, she's teamed up with dancer Shawn Byfield to create an infectious bit of youth theatre that is told largely through the medium of tap-dance, with only minimal text and a comic book sensibility thrown in for good measure.

It's called I Think I Can and it opened on the mainstage of the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre For Young People yesterday, where it will run through May 13.

Set in and around the school yard, it focuses on a pretty typical group of kids with some pretty typical lives, save for the fact that they communicate with each other in a dance-based shorthand that is both effective and eminently watchable.

While much of that communication is pretty everyday stuff, some of it is in a more serious vein -- a fact made highly obvious when the disabled Tip (Everett Smith) haltingly joins the group.

Kids being kids, of course, Tip just blends right in, until he draws the attention of the bullying Biow (David Cox) who sees in Tip's disability a chance to prove his own physical superiority.

Biow's bullying soon puts Tip in disfavour with The Teacher, ITIC's only speaking part, played with broad Celtic and Olive Oyl comic-book charm by Melody Johnson.

But while The Teacher is incensed with Tip's inexplicable behaviour, the majority of her attention is still taken up by the forthcoming science fair in which the entire student body will compete for the latest in electronic gadgetry -- a prize they all covet.

It's a competition that Biow would seem to have sewed up, until he falls victim to some of his own bullying ways and the rest of the group gets embroiled in the classroom equivalent of World War III, seemingly putting paid to all their prospects.

Finally, the only way they can win the contest and keep The Teacher happy is if they all co-operate, each playing their part in a familiar equation.

Crisply directed by Conrad Alexandrowicz, I Think I Can proves to be an attention grabber right off the top as sound designer Cathy Nosaty plays some cute cat 'n' mouse games on the sound system before a single performer hits Julia Tribe's slickly designed set.

And once Allison Bradley, Kyle Brown, Matthew Brown, Karla Jang, Tangara Jones and Tammy Nera hit the stage to team up with Cox, Smith and the irrepressible Johnson, it's pretty much non-stop, high-octane fun and adventure .

All of which means that the very big lessons at the heart of this story -- the thoughtless loneliness at the heart of Biow's bullying ways, the dreams Tip harbours and the value of co-operation and forgiveness -- are going to be absorbed more or less by osmosis by an audience that may not be able to speak the language of tap but who will learn how to understand it in a twinkling nonetheless.

As for the science of the piece, it seems to me that it might over-reach its audience by a year or two (hey, it's been awhile since I was a student!), but frankly, in the theatre, it's the human equation that's important. The rest is all relativity.
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