| 
 ENO
Madam Butterfly
The Coliseum,
London
November 2005
Reviewed by Dorothy Max Prior
Photo: Johan Persson Photography/ENO
Opera,
in theory, provides a wonderful opportunity for the creation
of a piece of ‘total theatre’ - a potential for
the merge of music and visual theatre into one fantastic whole.
The ENO’s Madam Butterfly achieves that totality (to
use a fashionable word), the irony being that it is a film
director (Anthony Minghella) rather than a theatre-maker who
brings it all together. But of course to those familiar with
the mores of visual theatre that isn’t that surprising,
as after all what is visual theatre if it isn’t a series
of moving pictures?
And what beautiful pictures! A wave of geishas appearing over
the horizon, clad in poppy red, fuchsia, turquoise, their
gorgeous forms and colours reflected in the enormous angled
mirror over the stage (which reminds me of Lepage’s
Far Side of the Moon – perhaps he should have beat Minghella
to it and cannibalised his own ideas for his recent opera
direction debut at the Royal Opera House?). A series of screens
that slide open and shut, creating rooms and chambers, the
secrets they conceal revealed by the mirror. Lanterns dancing
on rods, like a family of moons in the night sky. Trails of
billowing red silk representing a river of blood in the death
scene. I could go on – in purely visual terms, it is
one of the most sumptuously stunning stage presentations I
have witnessed.
The performances are melodramatic rather than dramatic –
how much of this is an intentional nod to Japanese theatre
traditions and how much the inevitability of working within
a form in which intensely emotional dialogue is all sung is
hard for me to say, with my limited experience of live opera,
and I would find it hard to comment with authority on the
interpretation of Puccini’s music – but it sounded
wonderful to my ears.
Which brings us to the reason for an opera review in Animations!
In a decision that caused consternation to some opera fans
and critics, Minghella decided to bring in a company of puppeteers
to create some of the characters in the production –
most crucially, Butterfly’s young son. The decision
to use up-and-coming company Blind Summit (founded by Nick
Barnes and Mark Down) was one that paid off. The puppets are
beautifully crafted, the animation absolutely spot-on. The
child-puppet, far from wooden, seems more real than the human
characters; his every gesture nervously delicate, the jumpy
puppy-dog energy of a young boy captured perfectly. Whenever
he is on stage, our attention is drawn to him. Miraculously,
his tiny gestures of hands and feet are not lost in the vast
space that is the Coliseum stage – this surely due to
the skills of the puppeteers, who are visible and clad in
traditional masked black outfits. One lovely touch in the
overall vision and direction of the piece is the way in which
the puppeteers’ dress is echoed in the chorus of similarly
clad performers who move screens or carry lanterns. As befits
a story in which the tragic outcome is known by the audience
before the show even starts, this gives a sense of the whole
production as a story that is being engineered from the outside
by the unseen powers of fate or the gods.
Madam Butterfly’s theatrically excessive death scene
is counter-balanced beautifully by the sight of the small
and frightened-looking, boy-puppet, blindfolded so he cannot
see what the audience is witnessing. Once again, we are shown
that a puppet can be the vessel for the main emotional thrust
of the production, reaching hearts that might otherwise be
too overcome by spectacle to respond to the core tragedy of
the story.
And we cannot end without a mention of the very end. Do these
people know how to take curtain calls! This becomes a whole
extra scene in itself as waves of people flow to the front
to take bow after bow. And there, right at the end, side-by-side
with the Prima Donna is the wonderful boy-puppet, accompanied
by the puppeteers of Blind Summit, who remove their masks
to tumultuous applause. This is the moment that British puppetry
has been waiting for, as rising stars of the artform are not
only asked to participate in the creating of a major work,
but also stand acknowledged in one of the high temples of
live performance, the Coliseum.
PETER
KETTURKAT
Theatre of Objects
Skipton Puppet Festival
September 2005
Reviewed by Beccy
Smith
Amongst
the rich sea of diverse storytelling and inventive tales that
the Skipton festival offered, Peter Ketturkat’s Theatre
of Objects stood out like a bizarre and recalcitrant octopus.
Multicoloured, ever-transforming and squirting ink at anyone
who dared to second-guess its surreal narrative, Ketturkat
transported his audience to a deeply imaginative world of
simple pleasures and impulses animating the most mundane of
objects.
Ketturkat’s work is renowned for its playful reinvention
of object theatre. A long narrow playboard provides a simple
wide-screen framing, the lighting state is fixed and the bizarrely
varied sound effects which voice the strange objects of his
world are created one-man-band-style by the two performers
hidden within. Yet the precision and aptitude with which Ketturkat
characterises his objects, testing every physical property
of each item, matching movement to shape, rhythm to mechanisms
and deftly mixing human qualities with the surreal, give a
sense that we’re witnessing a liberation of the essence
within each form. There’s no overarching structure to
the piece; instead spoons, corkscrews, garlic crushers and
tubing (and a host of objects which looked familiar but which
I couldn’t name) seemed to live out their inner logic
before us, before vanishing back to obscurity and, presumably,
the kitchen drawer or garden shed - but remaining forever
transfigured in our imagination.
For a British audience of a certain age, it’s unavoidably
reminiscent of Button Moon (it may be the slide whistle) and,
though gratifying, the forced demystification provided by
a very thorough demonstration of just how each object had
worked its magic seemed to overstate the case a little. However,
this remained an exciting reminder of the essential playfulness
and power of object transformation, indeed the power of puppetry
itself.
MOVINGSTAGE
MARIONETTE COMPANY
Out
of the Heart of Darkness
The Puppet Theatre Barge
October 2005
Reviewed by Beccy Smith
Conrad’s novella is a holy cow of literature, but following
the recent successes of adaptations such as His Dark Materials
and the puppetry production of Shakespeare’s Venus and
Adonis, it’s great to see the Puppet Barge winning support
to punch its weight artistically with this impressively inventive
literary revision.
Gren Middleton has made the provocative dramaturgical decision
to draw the story much closer to our time. His framing device
is a witty plea alleged to be from the wife of the deposed
Zaire president Mobutu, but employing the template of the
e-scam so familiar to any contemporary audience. The bait
is not gold but diamonds, and the dress is modern. Middleton
wants to bring the story ‘out of the heart of darkness’
and closer to a modern audience, and his script succeeds in
this, enriched by characters and ideas distinguished by their
familiarity, from the identifiably inept, Kafkaesque border
officials, to the inscrutable doctor and his heartfelt pronouncements
on depression, to the sexual ambivalence of the young man
who idolises Kurtz.
The presentation is sumptuous; with the narrow cinematic aperture
of the stage stunningly lit by Nele de Craecker and Gren Middleton,
and the stage images supplemented by tonally evocative abstract
backcloths, whose patterns, neither western nor African, capture
the ambivalence of the story’s approach to its subject
(and indeed the subject itself).
Against this changeful and evocative backdrop, Movingstage
again present some of the finest marionette manipulation available
to British audiences. The seven-strong troupe articulate complex
scenes of delicate emotion, expansive casts (an entire panel
of immigration judges was particularly memorable), and even
choreographed frenzy: indeed, the sinister dancing figures
conjured moments before Kurtz’s death to enact a mysterious
masked ritual genuinely express the chilling ‘otherness’
of the world portrayed. My only criticism would be that the
pre-recorded voices, whilst generally well acted, can divorce
us from the activity performed, rendering the puppetry and
staging mere imagery when all the vital ingredients are here
for a theatrical experience that can be so much more.
FOLKBEARD
FANTASY
The Fall of the House of Usherettes.
Corn
Exchange, Brighton
November 2005
Reviewed by Dorothy Max Prior
On stage is a stage-within-a-stage, and to the side of it
two enormous statues, which you just know are going to come
to life. They don’t until the very end of the show,
but instead – like the gods in a Greek tragedy –
keep an aloof eye on the frantic and ludicrous shenanigans
of the poor living creatures below. Forkbeard Fantasy are
fond of rummaging in the chest-drawers of culture to provide
fodder for their imagination. In this case, it is Edgar Allan
Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, which is the loose
inspiration for a story set in an old cinema, The Empire –
thus giving ample opportunities for the company’s trademark
dipping in and out of the screen, as well as providing the
frame for an investigation into the history of early cinema
that cleverly combines fact with foolish and funny nonsense
(although sometimes it is hard to know which is which). The
Usherettes of the title are a bevy of witch-y sisters who
steal their lines from Macbeth (Shakespeare being another
popular company source).
This show is a revival from 1995, and typical in many ways
of the company’s work – they have made a reputation
for themselves over the past three decades for their fantastic
(in all senses of the word) integrations of filmed and live
action. Others may play at this technique, but Forkbeard are
the masters. In their productions, a screen can be anything:
an umbrella, a piece of paper – and most effectively
in this show, a great fat balloon-head, which turns a live
character into a sort of hybrid object-person animated by
film.
As in other shows, The Fall of the House of Usherettes throws
everything into the bag in its pursuit of theatrical effect.
Theirs is a wonderfully messy theatre, the stage crammed with
whirring analogue projectors; actors who manage to make three
a crowd as they morph from one character to another, often
meeting their doubles on-screen; and bits of set that get
appropriated as props or indeed spring to life – which
brings us back to those statues, who eventually tire of the
human folly they are witnessing and put an end to it all in
a suitably overblown and grandiose way.
For anyone interested in object animation, automata and theatrical
illusion, this is a show that will appeal. One of the many
pleasures of their shows is the visibility of the techniques
used, which far from detracting from their effectiveness,
adds to it. Forkbeard, as always, can be relied on to entertain
whilst simultaneously commenting on the nature of popular
entertainment – a clever double-whammy. Theatre will
eat itself, and Forkbeard Fantasy will be at the head of the
table at the feast!
LA
CONICA/ LACONICA
Shadows
of Found Objects
Norwich Puppet Theatre’s International Celebration of
Puppetry, October 2005
Reviewed by Beccy Smith
This production’s part in the diverse programming of
the International Celebration of Puppetry Festival at Norwich
merits special attention for its interdisciplinary approach
and divisive effect upon the audience. Using a series of objects
garnered from the streets of Barcelona (including traffic
cones, barbed wire, string, netting, twigs, cups and a cheese-grater)
the company create what can only be described as a synaesthetic
experience for the audience, carefully marrying skilfully
constructed images with well chosen music to create a series
of ‘scenes’ varying in tone and colour.
The majority of these images are essentially abstract: moving
patterns of ribs, contours, reflection and texture. Some sense
of dialogue or tension is at times present between the qualities
of the things themselves, gradually or suddenly revealed,
and the beautiful, alien images cast by their shadows. There
are moments when a relationship or narrative seems to suggest
itself, however: the skate-dance of two brittle twigs or the
moment when a ridged form seems to resolve itself momentarily
into a city skyline behind which the lights of industry or
apocalypse glow. One of the most moving images created a horizon-like
shadow above which a murky amber ‘sun’ began to
rise. This was quickly overtaken however by a perfectly clear,
marbled cream moon. As the moon traversed and set, the sun
sank once more to a sliver of liquid light on the horizon
accompanied by evocative Arabic flute. There was a powerfully
elemental feel to the scene.
This is object theatre taken to its furthest conclusion and
in doing so it starts to reinvent itself, becoming more ‘object’
than theatre, asking the audience to consider the art of transformation
in and of itself rather than in service of a dramatic exchange.
It could be installation art, looping in a back room at the
Tate Modern (although it is thrillingly precise live). However,
placing it in a theatrical setting invites the audience to
seek narrative, to identify their world and feelings in the
images shown, to be actively involved in creating the ‘drama’,
in its broadest possible sense.
This is a lot to ask of an audience, and it was clear that
many felt disengaged by the procession of images and sound.
But to situate puppetry, and an example of shadow manipulation
of a very high calibre, on the edges of performance, live
art and installation is vital work in the engagement of new
audiences, and in this age of artistic cross reference and
hybridisation of form and process, tone and content, the piece
had much to offer the theatrically adventurous.
FAULTY
OPTIC
Horsehead
 Komedia,
Brighton
November 2005
Reviewed by Dorothy Max Prior
Faulty Optic’s darkly humorous productions always have
a nightmarish quality. Horsehead has many features familiar
from earlier shows which combine to create the desired effect:
knobbly, cranky puppet characters trapped in Beckett-esque
no-man-landscapes; eerie electronic soundscapes punctuated
with odd clunks and hums; a switch from live puppet action
to a mix of live and filmed-live-before-your-eyes video, giving
the viewer a displaced double experience that plays with scale
and notions of what is ‘real’ in the field of
perception; Heath Robinson-inspired sets full of ingenious
whirring and whizzing moving parts.
But in their latest production, Faulty Optic up the ante –
introducing us to Horsehead, who is half a pantomime horse
and destined to become one of the most deeply, darkly, disturbing
nightmare characters of all time. The love interest is provided
by a pole-dancing puppet girl who has an unfortunate accident
and, following a grotesque amputation, becomes the other half
of the horse. Think the shadow side of the Ahlbergs’
Mr and Mrs Hay the Horse; think mutilated Muffin the Mule
(another half-horse of course) as viewed through a bad acid
trip; think of all your childhood nightmares about toys, clothes
and other inanimate objects coming to life at night (I will
never look a hobby-horse in the eye again). Oh please let
me wake up…
We meet Horsehead on screen, alive and kicking, and later
dead and maggot-ridden in a wonderful scene that has something
of a Swankmeyer quality; we encounter Horsehead on stage as
a lumpy-pillow animated head, and most menacingly as a mask-puppet-human
hybrid, towering terrifyingly over the inmates of a sanatorium.
A break with Faulty Optic tradition comes in the use of an
onstage narrator cum sound-effects man, who gives an appropriate
Victorian sideshow feel to the production: Horsehead fits
well with the current theatrical preoccupation with burlesque,
variety and circus as metaphor and source material, and in
its odd and twisted way adds commentary to the question of
the role of the freak within popular entertainment forms.
There are a few (unintentionally) clunky moments here and
there, and sometimes the pace is a little slacker than it
could be, but this I am sure is just because it is very early
days for this new show, not due to any intrinsic problems
with the dramaturgy of the piece. With an appearance at the
London International Mime Festival (January 2006) on the horizon,
Faulty Optic’s Horsehead will I’m sure be galloping
off to great future success after this early outing in Brighton.
Fantastic stuff – a trip into the darkest recesses of
our collective popular culture psyche.
GREEN
GINGER
Rust
Tobacco Factory, Bristol
Nov 2005
Reviewed by Beccy Smith
Green Ginger’s latest show invites us into a typically
surreal yet provincial universe: their stage peopled with
rusty industrial hulks; illicit underwater-recorded trading;
mutated DJs and romance on the factory floor. Unwitting hero
Spike has unusual powers when stimulated by quality punk (‘When
I dance…strange things happen’). He must team
up with the renegade Mutant Brothers, underwater DJs plotting
revenge upon the local industrial oppressor; polluter of both
waters and minds via his pervasive Presbyterian radio streaming.
Dedicated to the memory of John Peel, the show sets the oppressive
visions of industrialism and ideological fascism against the
carnivalesque individualism of irreverent music, circus and
love. These stark parallels make the story a simple one –
it is, in essence, a fairytale – but what transforms
it into a piece of work engaging for an adult audience is
the diverse grotesqueries of the cast of characters and excellent
comic writing.
Paranoid Lionel-the-Vinyl, conflicted between drug-induced
nervousness and music-inspired bravado as his alter-ego the
Groovemaster, is a great comic creation. The bizarre back-story,
brilliantly interpolated by cartoon projections - involving
the accidental amputation of a bearded lady as the cause of
the antihero’s fall from grace - is inspired.
Flick Ferdinando’s direction makes inventive use of
the playboard’s multiple apertures, keeping the episodic
script’s pace moving throughout. There are some lovely
visual moments: real water spurting from holes drilled into
a small-scale submarine wheeled onto the forestage, and the
revelation of a ship and a sub bobbing along the top of the
stage on ‘waves’ created by a huge turning drill
bit is both visually and dramaturgically satisfying. The framing
device – having the puppeteers arrive as crew to jauntily
take their positions behind the playboard, and peppering the
puppetry with live action interludes and shanties on the forestage
- give an enjoyably complicit, folksy feel.
The performances are excellent: the expressive foam clap-mouths
brought vividly to life by Chris Pire, Marc Parrett and Vic
Llewellyn who handle well a script complex in action and dialect.
Special mention should be made of the cross-manipulation and
lip-syncing of the Siamese twins.
Back in their native Bristol and celebrating their 25th anniversary,
this premiere was almost a salon show for Green Ginger and
the packed house roared its approval - largely merited in
this inventive, well-written and satisfyingly bizarre show.
FULLBEAM
VISUAL THEATRE
The
Man Who Discovered That Women Lay Eggs
Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Mill Studio,
Guildford
November 2005
Reviewed by Penny Francis
The publicity leaflet for this show promises a ‘bawdy,
enthralling and eye-opening performance’. It told the
story – at some length and in some detail – of
the gradual, indeed centuries-long, discovery by scientifically
inclined men, of the source of a woman’s sexual pleasure;
which pleasure was most likely to induce the internal matter
which might or might not contain the eggs of the title.
The vehicles of the story were a number of historical characters
(puppets), masked actors, and large props, helping along the
central trio, a working-from-home scientist husband and his
brainless wife (both humans, unmasked) and the wife’s
even more brainless spinster sister (a life-size puppet held
in front of the actress). The set was a long dissecting table
surrounded by various statues and objects depicting or suggesting
the female genital region, and a number of dead animals. The
style of the depictions, at first obviously humorous, became
more and more realistic.
The exploration of the female organs was explicitly shown
in large cut-out pictures, and I’m afraid that neither
the humour (the acting was send-up Victorian melodramatic
declamation, mostly) nor the rather surprising nature of the
discovery were of a quality to engage. I think the delicacy
of the subject demanded wit, not farce; suggestion and subtlety,
not full-on crudity. Indeed, I was weak-stomached and embarrassed
enough to be forced to leave, pleading the onset of a cold.
Fullbeam has a good idea, here staged by a production team
numbering over a dozen. Very many people and institutions
of note are thanked in the programme for their involvement,
not least the Bristol Old Vic. But the treatment lets it down,
in every department.
Perhaps an audience younger than myself, more used to the
broad brushstrokes employed in this show (literally and metaphorically)
would be entertained?
DYNAMIC
NEW ANIMATIONS
Baba Yaga - Boney Legs
Jackson’s Lane, London
November 2005
Reviewed by Eleanor Margolies
Baba Yaga is a terrifying witch who lives deep in the Russian
forest. The design of this production (which is both directed
and designed by Rachel Riggs) picks up Russian motifs beautifully:
the heroine, Lisa (Emma Lewis) wears a red kerchief, a bodice
laced with red ribbon and an embroidered white skirt. Her
pocket companion, Little Doll, hatches out of a painted matryoshka
wooden doll. A landscape is created by zigzags of white sheet
strung between wooden poles, each finished with a wrought-iron
spiral – a perfect mixture of the domestic and mystical
– on which Lisa’s home and the forest are projected
as shadow silhouettes, evoking folk art papercuts.
There are beautiful moments: a man swings a huge white flag
through the air until it catches the projected image of a
horseman; the shadow seems to gallop on the flowing cloth,
dissolving as he rides away. And funny moments: acrobatic
Lisa tricks the witch’s magical gate (alive with painted
eyes) off its hinges as it copies her stamping feet and ever-deeper
bows. The witch’s hut - which stands on chicken’s
legs - unfolds ingeniously into a glove-puppet booth. There
is plenty to look at and enjoy.
However, crucial turning points in the story are obscured
by clumsy scene changes, slack writing and (above all) muffled
voices. Adam Bennett has a virtuoso talent for characterisation
which he demonstrates in other DNA productions, such as the
joyous Chicken Licken. Unfortunately, in this show a microphone
and voice manipulation technology deprive us of our visceral
sense of where the voices come from (especially important
when the objects used as puppets have little inherent movement).
So Baba Yaga, her gruesome watch-skulls and the wicked stepmother
are easily confused voice-overs.
This contributes to the sense of haste in the dramatisation
of some of the most poetic moments in the tale: the binding
of the enchanted birch trees, the comb that turns into a thicket,
the wheat that grows overnight. These images could resonate
for spectators of all ages, but the staging needs to allow
more time to establish their fairy-tale truth.
LITTLE
ANGEL COMPANY
Fantastic Mr Fox
Little Angel Theatre, London
September 2005
Reviewed by Beccy Smith
Steve Tiplady’s production of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic
Mr. Fox energetically transposes the story into a theatrical
key. Families in the packed house were completely engaged
by the dynamic combination of rousing sing-along songs, the
drama of the chase and the hugely engaging characters brought
to life by the tireless team of four performers.
Sarah Woods’ script perfectly captured the slightly
twisted and gleeful tone of Dahl’s story, from the moral
certitude of the family of foxes trapped in increasingly dire
straights underground to the satisfyingly grotesque attributes
of Mr Fox’s sworn enemies, Boggis, Bunce and Bean. After
an opening slightly over-laden with exposition, Woods kept
the action pacy, yet leaving enough room for some stand-out
moments of characterization (Badger’s heartfelt ‘I
love you Foxy’ was especially enjoyable and the kids
loved the varied characters of the three fox cubs) - not to
mention show-stopping dance numbers, complete with coordinated
chickens!
The performances of the four-strong company drove the production
with great energy, filling stage and auditorium with relish
as they created a host of memorable characters. Jonathan Broughton’s
Badger was a fruity delight and Caroline Partridge merits
special mention for the tremendous range of her performance
from Mrs Fox to Boggis to a territorially tipsy Rat. Oliver
Taylor as Mr Fox offered an enjoyably ambiguous heart to the
piece, occasionally feeling slightly too laconic for the action
but undeniably cool.
Peter O Rourke’s set was also a pleasure, his richly
coloured panels and textures distilling the essential dynamism
of the production. Ingenious as ever, the deconstruction of
the set by enormous human diggers was a satisfying and tangible
rendering of the farmers apocalyptic destruction of the forest,
and the varying scale and design of the central characters
puppets consistently surprised and excited the audience.
A rollicking and satisfying theatrical imagining of one of
Dahl’s best-loved tales: tasty as a shed load of roast
chickens!
AKHE
Wet
Wedding
Riverside
Studios, London
November 2005
Reviewed by Matthew Isaac Cohen
The audience enters a place of work. Two brawny bearded men
with clown-like white makeup, one bare-chested and wearing
an apron, the other in boxing shorts, prowl the stage, snapping
whips, pouring and consuming and spilling wine and champagne.
There is smoke and clanking sounds. A saxophone player, just
offstage, plays fragmented jazz riffs. Ropes and pulleys are
everywhere. A pair of hands (belonging to a person hidden
inside a cubicle) pulls a pulley that stretches across the
stage. Towering over all this is a wooden cubical frame suspended
over a covered trench. Washing appears on the pulley, the
bearded men don sopping wet shirts, the saxophone player walks
up the aisle to the back of the theatre, and the house lights
dim.
Then begins - or perhaps more accurately continues - a wordless
performance, more rite than theatre: Akhe’s Wet Wedding.
And what a wedding it is. Akhe is a St Petersburg company
founded in 1989 by visual artists Maxim Isaev and Pavel Semchenko.
Its first forays into live performance were happenings in
parks, stairwells and other public spaces, fusing absurd actions,
bizarre props and frantic intensity. It has consistently been
interested in the animation of objects, and the fragmentation
of human performers into puppet-like things. Wet Wedding began
its life as an outdoor performance and might well be described
as a post-puppet performance in which the entire stage is
an object of performance and actors have as much (or as little)
autonomy as things. It is composed of a series of actions
and tableaux which, when compiled, tell the old story of boy
marries girl.
First, boy needs to be socialized. Hoisted out of a pile of
manure by a pulley, jerking and protesting without words on
his harness, the boy is a wild child wearing only a g-string;
sprayed with beans and bathed in dry ice on an elevated platform
by one of the bearded men, given a tattered suit, a straw
hat and a pair of glasses to wear, the boy becomes an adult
man. The man with glasses smiles and embraces the bearded
man: they are equals, compatriots. The hands pulling the pulley
are meanwhile subjected to a similar routine of discipline.
Powdered, whipped, forced to crush an egg, the hands are less
than human, not quite a thing. But then the person emerges
from the cubicle and with an all-too-human smile and embrace,
she becomes a person.
This, then, is our cast: a man and a woman who are only people
by virtue of their animation by two bearded, whip-snapping
wine guzzlers. The man and woman have crepes strapped to their
faces and are teased and led blindly to each other by the
tinkling of cocktail mixers. They eat the crepes off each
other’s faces, and bask in their sameness as fellow
human beings. The courtship proceeds apace. The huge square
trench is uncovered to reveal a pool of water, which over
the performance becomes increasingly polluted with powders,
empty wine bottles, fluids. String puppets dance in anticipation
of consummation. As the foursome stir the pool with poles,
strings attached to the poles animate pulleys - a hammer,
an effigy strapped to a plank, planks attached to a dress.
A slanted table is placed in the pool, the woman pours wine
and other liquids, and the man catches it in a glass and consumes
the noxious mixture. The two bearded men stretch out on the
ground, watching, amused. The man and woman sprinkle the table
with powder, the woman lights the table on fire, the man collapses
and is stripped back to his g-string, as the woman puts on
bridal attire and smokes a cigarette. A fish on a wooden tray
is cast adrift in the pool. The man disembowels it, covering
himself in its guts. But he also discovers a message on a
piece of paper hidden inside the fish and reading this makes
him a person once more. The man reassumes his dignity and
the couple exits as the cube is elevated above the stage once
more, swinging back and forth, back and forth. A few final
spasms of the saxophone, applause, a Russian patriotic hymn,
and the audience exits sludging through the murky puddles
the performance has left behind.
Wet Wedding is a spectacle better experienced than summarized,
a challenge for the intellect, but also potentially a joy
for any child. Though clearly intended for an international
audience, it is also intensely Russian in its tone and sensibilities,
harking back to constructivist experiments of the 1920s and
the rich traditions of Russian object theatre. It is an allegory
of love and hope, alienation and cruelty in the polluted,
alcohol-clouded and absurd environment of post-Soviet Russia,
where the indignities of the Soviet past are more than a memory,
and the security of a market-driven economy less than a certainty.
Painting on a canvas far larger than typically mobilized by
British companies emerging from puppet and object theatre,
Akhe, along with Argentinean puppet-based company El Perférico
de Objectos and Quebec’s Ex Machina, is poised at the
crest of the wave of performance between human and puppet
theatre. This theatre makes for a giddy surf-ride for all
spectators.
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