The cards are drawn, and what will happen will happen. As we enter the space – a big old church with a grand high ceiling, shadows cast on rough brick walls – two men, dressed in great frock-coats and tall hats, are sat upstage behind painted lecterns, turning over playing cards and throwing them to the ground. The lecterns are hinged, and the effect is of one of those ‘head, bodies, legs’ games. The lights dim and the lecterns move forward, downstage to the very front of the stage space, opened out to become a kind of painted wall on which our two performers perch drinks and candles – candles which burn through strings, which cause things to fall… And so we are off!
In Mr Carmen, Russian ‘theatre of engineering’ supremos Akhe are up to their usual tricks. There is smoke, flame even. There are flat puppets whizzing round a wire square surrounding the space, which creates a kind of surreal boxing ring in which our two combatants in love slog it out. There are pulleys and winches, cardboard and string, water and wine, paint and sand.
This version of (or perhaps we should say homage to) Carmen goes back to the original novella by Prosper Mérimée – Carmen’s husband is written out of Bizet’s famous ‘opera comique’. It is the rivalry between men that is at the forefront of this exploration, which exploits the tragicomic aspects of the story. Carmen herself is nowhere to be seen, an elusive absence referenced with dancing dolls, roses, lipsticks, and a red chalked heart on a board. Her name (and her lover, Jose’s name) are writ large – in glitter, in foam, in fire; as wood-block prints and in blood-red paint on crumpled brown paper.
Everywhere in this word-free piece there are visual, physical and musical allusions to the Carmen story: cigars are rolled on thighs, frockcoats opened to reveal matador-style red stockings. Andalusian trumpets sound, and a guitar is strummed with Duende passion. There is a cigarette light dance duet, a whirling all-male flamenco (beautifully absurd as danced by the burly men of Akhe), and a knife fight using a whole medley of different weapons.
As always in Akhe shows, puppetry, paper engineering and automata feature heavily, with two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures made in their own distinctive style, a kind of mulch of Russian folkloric and Dada. It goes without saying that the performances are pitch-perfect, and it all adds up to a wonderful show – Akhe at their eccentric best.