Author Archives: Bill Parslow

Mary Pearson: Failure (and other opportunities for non-linear success)

Mary Pearson greets us in her dressing gown at the entrance to the Nightingale Theatre, as if she were just out on her front doorstep one morning and had found a bunch of neighbours milling around. The questions are innocuous at first, then a little more searching (going from ‘How are you?’ to ‘How is your Five Year Plan going?’). It’s a nice introduction, where Pearson charms from the start – being careful to do so on the basis, perhaps, that if you are a failure you do need to be nice to people.

She effortlessly steps up a gear with an introductory dance piece centred around a pile of white beans, about eighteen inches in diameter. Oh, I forgot: as we came in each of us were asked to take as many beans in from a proffered bowl as we had unrealised desires, so the beans were already charged with a certain significance. The dance is strong and precise, and at various times she redistributes the beans in different shapes around her with sweeping controlled movements – a big swirling, spiral nebular. Other shapes emerge – a flower, a heart – creating compelling and mutable images that complement her dance.

The staging is minimalist – a plinth here, a screen to one side to change behind – but is sensitively lit for the different phases of the show. Pearson plays herself mainly, but there are some other characters that she morphs into, through subtle changes of face and voice – one a rather dry American academic reminding her of her failures from an intellectual standpoint.

Pearson is a veritable multimedia show in herself, singing then multi-tracking her voice for one piece which started out slow but built up to a more intense collage of sound and commentary. But what was most impressive was her ability to move from close-up, personal, intimate conversation with the audience, to a commanding physicality that filled the space. At one point she scatters the white beans across the entire stage – a very satisfying gesture that transformed the black box arena she was in.

Her set pieces worked well, even when, as befits the title of the show, she undercuts her portrayals with a dry comedy. One particular dress-up part has her donning ribbons, high heeled shoes, a wig, and instead of the sunglasses that would have conventionally filled out this image, a large black eye patch. It changes a hackneyed image into a deeper and more sinister one, and there are other good physical and visual jokes. Pearson works with the personal (which lends the show an edgy authenticity) but within a wider canvas so that there is no sense of indulgence – this is about everybody’s experience of success versus failure, about the way the goalposts have moved (or have they?). There is a lovely sequence where she is putting on a dress behind the screen, in silhouette, and she is struggling vainly to reach and do up the back zip – it’s a poignant and practical image of the failure of being on your own! At the other end of the scale she has episodes of more expansive dance and movement that fit the drama of the narrative and are aesthetically pleasing.

It’s an engaging show, well produced and rehearsed, Pearson making even the flicking of stray beans from under her feet a studied gesture that gives you a sense of the great control she has over her stage presence. There is audience participation as well – invites and rebuffs that fit nicely into the fabric of the performance. Pearson herself is outstanding in her range and concentration, performing with a focus and warmth that draws you in. You end with a lightly conveyed sense of the ways in which success or failure are defined by the myriad expectations that surround us; the skill, or some sort of answer, lies in defining your own boundaries – or creating your own ‘opportunities for non-linear success’. I stayed for another performance in the Nightingale that night and was strangely comforted to see one stray white bean, missed in the extensive clear-up, just poking out from a small gap in the bottom of the stage wall left. To loosely paraphrase some of Pearson’s last words, some things perish, others survive.

Theatre Témoin: The Fantasist

The Fantasist opens with Theatre Témoin’s signature mix of the realistic and the surreal as the powerfully played protagonist, Louisa, writhes and tosses against the white sheet background that is her bed – a first scene that captures the unease of disturbed sleep as well as creating suspense as to what will happen next. As she performs a piece that’s half a dance, half a realistic piece of acting, Louisa’s changing body shapes suggest attempts to hang onto sleep and hints at the dreams she might be having. Then sheet and pillow are gone and there is a misshapen wardrobe behind her, hinting at secret worlds and desires, dark cupboards and black depths.

The performance twists between the realism of visits from Louisa’s empathetic psychiatric nurse, and another visitor, maybe a friend, who ably demonstrates that sympathy alone is not enough to reach across the storm waters of Louisa’s condition, bipolar disorder. The visions and nightmares that Louisa has are embodied in the show’s puppets: a small anatomical mannequin that squeals and whines for sympathy, and a life-size man in a coat who draws Louisa into his embrace but is ultimately after a destructive control. The production hints at the creativity and aliveness that she experiences in her illness, but does not romanticise or laud this as any compensation. It’s not relentlessly grim – there’s humour here too in the wheedling puppet, in the disembodied heads that doubletalk to each other and to Louisa – but overall the puppets are symbolic of powerful and destructive forces. The small puppet that crawls out of the waste bin it has been dumped in is both amusing and horrifying in equal measure.

There are no answers offered to mental illness – the piece is solely a portrayal. There are moments of sinister joy – but as Louisa says of the larger puppet figure, ‘first he seduced me, then he tore me apart’. The cool and caring voice of reason comes from the nurse – you are going too fast, she tells Louisa, you must slow down. The sedative that she gives her does indeed slow her down, but to Louisa it feels like ice, freezing her into stillness.

The puppets are cleverly worked, the figures in black who manipulate them always visible, but never intrusive and in fact adding to this sense of the dark forces that drive and manipulate mental illness.

The paintings that Louisa creates, born of manic energy, are destroyed by the same forces in their malign aspect. As a living picture of this kind of illness the performance is strong and dark. The decision to use puppets to represent Louisa’s hallucinations and drives is powerfully ironic as she is as much at the mercy of her condition as the puppets are of their workers, an image that is forced home when the larger puppet becomes her puppeteer, making her do as he wishes, pulling the strings of her psyche in a grotesque dance.

It is a bleak picture. The two other characters, the nurse and the friend, are powerless to intervene in the nightmare cauldron of Louisa’s fantasies, as they are unable to see or believe the power of the world that she inhabits. The production of The Fantasist was faultless, the performances from puppeteers and actors polished and incisive, the music original and inventive and perfectly tuned to the action on the stage, but at the end, though I had been given an insight into the terror of suffering a bipolar condition, there was nothing I could do with or about it. The narrative showed the violent see-saw of reality and fantasy that Louisa inhabited, but without any hope of redemption or relief. It was powerful, and I suspect it was based on real or gathered experiences because it had that feel of authenticity, but I felt strangely unmoved at the end, denied any conclusion or happy ending. But, then, perhaps that’s just the way it is. The message seemed to be that you can only view someone in this condition with compassion, but you can seldom help or rescue them – and I’m not sure that is entirely true, that this is the whole story. However, The Fantasist is certainly an accomplished journey into a terrifying and bizarre world that many of us will never experience, and it’s a great performance.

Chris Cresswell: Qua Qua Qua

Chris Cresswell’s persona in Qua Qua Qua, his homage to Jaques Tati, is a long, long way from the Chris Creswell who plays the booming frontman and impresario of the wacky high energy cabaret Voodoo Vaudeville, or from Creswell’s alter ego in that show, the unctuous and knowing Baby Warhol hand puppet, floating in a picture frame like a Surrealist Sooty. Qua Qua Qua‘s performance style is a much gentler, more intimate form of comedy, based firmly in the everyday and the confusions that may lie in the simplest of activities. Cresswell uses two of Tati’s main characters – Mr Hulot from Mr Hulot’s Holiday and other films, and the postman François, from Jour de Fête– as well as delivering an impersonation of the man himself. There are two angles here: one the exploration of Tati’s peculiar brand of humour, a kind of 1950s Mr Bean; the other taking in the wider subjects of theatre, the humour of the ordinary, and the humour of the moment itself.

The show begins with a loud crash, and a bicycle wheel rolling onto the stage: the postman has arrived. Cresswell is a tall, imposing man, having a stature which he uses to good effect in his louder MC acts in venues like the Spiegeltent, but a stature, too, which can be undercut by a shambling humility. It’s the perfect mix for the Tati characters. I also get the feeling that he is entirely in his skin in this kind of portrayal – it’s where his performing heart is. These characters have just the right mix of the bumbling gentle melancholy that facilitates comedy without cruelty. The audience is won over right from the start, ripples of laughter spreading through it.

Sounds are an important part of Tati films (for example the bouncing of the coffee pot in Mon Oncle, followed by the tinkling smash of the glass that doesn’t bounce – there are incidental sounds everywhere in his films). Inside the parcels that our postman delivers to the audience are items that create sound effects for many of Qua Qua Qua‘s scenes. I don’t like putting spoilers in reviews, so I won’t say exactly how it is done, but the entirely realistic sounds of typing on a manual typewriter are audience produced, as are those of rain and the flapping of a bird’s wings.

Most of the comedy is physical and visual – the tennis player facing the audience, with the thock of the tennis ball as the cue, is a great piece, slowly built up with facial expressions and whole body contortions. A testament to how good this is was the fact that occasionally the tennis moves seemed out of synch with the sound of the ball, but that didn’t matter – the movement and physical comedy overpowered such minor considerations.

The audience participation is good fun for both participants and those left behind: the ballet of the brooms, for instance, obtains its charm both from watching a volunteer drilled onstage, and from the celebration of this most prosaic of items, whether it is sweeping the stage or twirled like a slow-motion cheerleader’s baton.

A scene at a station brings in the rest of the cast, and again it’s a well played visual comedy of the everyday: the girl on the beach with the towel, another tennis player, another girl, another man, and of course beach balls that slowly settle on the stage, thrown from the wings, somehow intrinsically funny in themselves. The cast take on the mantle of this understated but expressive comic style very well, and it’s fun to watch.

One quibble would be the character of Jaques Tati himself as played by Cresswell in a not entirely convincing thick French accent (the Franglais was better). I wonder whether that would have been better played straight in Cresswell’s normal voice (as there’s enough communication and power in his physical presentation) or whether the accent needs hamming up even more.

Overall it’s an enthralling show with a slow, rolling pace that smoothly leads you into an entirely believable world where birds fly down and alight on one’s pipe. The key word is gentle – not in the English sense of gentle mocking comedy, but in the sense of a celebratory melancholy found in the everyday humour and sadness of things. It made me want to look at more of Tati’s work. His six films are undeniably strange from a 21st Century perspective, but I think this show gave me a greater insight into their slower, and that word again, gentler underlying comedy. Cresswell is taking risks in the show, improvising as necessary, and it works without working too hard; there’s no strain in the clowning. He was probably lucky to get an inordinately enthusiastic audience member for one part of the show, but then I think the atmosphere was such that this kind of participation would succeed anyway, and he has the skills to direct whoever appears on the stage.

Le Mot Juste: The Overcoat

Le Mote Juste give a virtuoso physical performance of Gogol’s short story, with a minimalist stage set and furious swapping of characters and postures drawing the audience through the narrative. There are some great comic moments: the hunting of the cats needed for a fur collar is extremely funny, and the demeanour of Akaky Akakievich is convincingly that of the pathetic and lowly clerk who pins all his hopes on a new overcoat to replace the tattered article he currently wears.

The scene changes are represented by the deft movement of a couple of frames, so you move fairly easily between the office, with the clerks and excellencies gossiping, and Akakievich’s lodgings. The look-down-your-nose snobbery of the massive Russian bureaucracy comes across well, as does the excruciating flattery of Akaky Akakievich when he achieves the loan to buy his much coveted overcoat. Other characters, such as the alcoholic tailor and his wife are more woodenly portrayed – the assumed cockney accents jar on the ear, and the portrayals are more caricatured than comic.

Overall though the narrative is a little bitty – and it is rather confusing if you know the original story, as it departs from it in some significant ways. For all the exactness and cleverness of the physical comedy, the performance is strangely soulless. It seems obvious that Akaky Akakievich will lose his cloak and his status will revert back to what it was before. While the transitions and different scenes – the mocking employees, the pompous boss, the landlady who hankers for Akaky Akakievich – are admirably portrayed in themselves, the physical dance and movement seem just to distinguish one scene from another, rather than add any great meaning or beauty to the production. This is obviously a talented company, and there is much display of their abilities, but there is something very significant missing from the heart of The Overcoat.

www.lemotjustetheatre.com

Second Impression Theatre: In Your Dreams!

The impossibly awful Val opens the proceedings by ranting at Jess for taking lunch-breaks and for her pedestrian progress in her work. As she goes off to complain to the MD (again), her sweet and new-agey colleague Erin sympathises, and speaks admiringly of Jess’ relationship with her boyfriend. The scene is set for a piece that explores the disparity between our lives and our dreams – but as it turns out both are full of chaos, and Second Impression discover some very funny comic dialogue and set pieces in either world.

The actors were sure, crisp and clear when delivering their declamatory dialogue. Val’s diatribe and Jess’ ripostes are in themselves exaggerated, with a slightly unrealistic bluntness chracterising Val’s haranguing. The minimal set enhances this displacement of the real. The idea, I guess, is to demonstrate what is really going on in this office and these people’s lives, rather than hinting at it under the surface. This segues into the dream sequences quite nicely, as the play takes on a more nightmarish and surreal atmosphere.

The first dream escalates the comedy. Jess’ boyfriend’s new ‘best friend’ warns us that he wants proper applause for the minor operation he is about to perform, without anaesthetic, on Jess’ toe. Pain relief, he tells us, will be provided by a cuddly toy distraction, and Val, transmogrified into Sal, waves a huge fluffy bunny in Jess’ face. The surgeon – Al – invites us to practice our applause, berates us for not doing it well enough, and whips the audience up into a frenzy for the operation itself. It works as comedy – the audience enjoys it immensely.

Then as Jess falls asleep, her ‘dreams’ come true: she rids herself of boorish boyfriend Pete, Val transforms – but all is not well. The play is, I think, exploring different kinds of dreams: dreams as understood by our New Age positivity; daydreams of the trapped and dissatisfied; and dreams proper where the psyche runs amok.

There’s some great comedy here, and the piece deftly exposes the worst of self-improvement blarney. (‘It’s your job to manage your manager,’ says Erin, ‘theyare the ones with insecurities – that’s why they become managers.’) In the end, though, I came away not quite satisfied: I’d laughed a lot, and the dialogue was witty and well-played, but the play didn’t seem to settle on any resolution other than that the world of dreams was much more dysfunctional than everyday life, which is bad enough for Jess anyway, trapped between a rabid boss and a boring boyfriend. And as for those attempts at self-improvement: they are just as silly and random.

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