Author Archives: Geraldine Harris

Gonzo Moose: Grimm and Grimmer ¦ Photo: Farrows Creative

Gonzo Moose: Grimm and Grimmer

Gonzo Moose: Grimm and Grimmer ¦ Photo: Farrows Creative

Pegasus Theatre is a beautiful space which offered a fantastically warm welcome to this family Christmas show. There was a beautifully designed fairytale treasure trail throughout the front of house spaces, a live band playing during the interval (selected shows), friendly staff – many of whom are clearly young people involved in the life of the theatre – and a clearly very happy and chatty audience of all ages.

The trip was worth it for the vibrant and festive atmosphere alone – andGrimm and Grimmer was a likeable, funny but underdeveloped show. It had a basic ‘adventure’ storyline in which the Grimm brothers’ sister Lotte travels to the fairytale kingdom in order to find the evil Rumpelstiltskin and free her brother from a Faustian pact whereby he forfeits his heart in exchange for all the fairytales in the world. At midnight tomorrow. While Lotte (Lauren Silver) is travelling through a rather sparsely evoked ‘kingdom’, then, her co-actors are free to appear as a range of fairytale characters – though they are either bizarre reimaginings of typical Grimm characters, or brand new ones altogether. Some of these work better than others – the American-Jewish king and queen, the mime prince, and the wolf-grandmother are very funny, while some zombie cannibal characters are just plain gruesome and a court jester character gets a bit boring. The fairy kingdom element of the show is thus rather patchy, and more a series of comedy sketches of varying quality than a suspenseful story with joined-up thinking behind it. Why reinvent such lauded and successful characters? Why don’t we learn more about the Grimm brothers and their pact with Rumpelstiltskin? What on earth was the bear character with the bourbon biscuits all about? These are some questions that were not sufficiently explored.

The show is very much a devised piece and Gonzo Moose’s strength at comedy improvisation comes through – although some opportunities to interact with a very energetic and engaged young audience were missed. With greater confidence in their abilities and further R&D in the early stages this could have been a winning show but at the moment it lacks depth.

www.gonzomoose.co.uk

Sound&Fury: Going Dark ¦ Photo: Edmund Collier

Sound&Fury: Going Dark

Sound&Fury: Going Dark ¦ Photo: Edmund Collier

This is a show about the universe, about space and time, and about how we relate to it. It is about the relationship between sight, imagination and understanding. It is also about going blind.

Enormous themes to be tackling in a tiny, black box, with the audience seated on four sides on stools, a minimal set, hardly any performance space, and one actor… Sound&Fury play with sound, surrounding the audience so that we are inside the planetarium where the lead character (John Mackay) teaches people about the stars, or inside the house where he lives with his six year-old son, Leo. Leo is never seen, but through aural trickery we hear him as if he was there – and in the darkness and closeness of the auditorium he could well be just out of sight. The child’s voiceover is perfect, and Mackay interacts convincingly with it.

The centrepiece of the tiny stage is a large and clever light box of some kind.  It projects constellations onto the ceiling and we learn about the immensity of the universe and all that’s in it. In juxtaposition, it doubles as a table, where the father practices making Leo’s peanut butter sandwiches with a blindfold on, to be ready for the onset of the retinitis pigmentosa that is going to cost him his sight. Light is used to create the occasional striking or beautiful image – for example, a red and gold glowing ‘sun’ the size of a tennis ball is held up, a cluster of fairylights signify the pole star and the great plough, and light projected perfectly onto a piece of paper represents a newly developed photograph.

Hattie Naylor’s script is simple and effective, and at times the words, acting, sound and use of light and darkness come together to create real emotion, but it is rare. The effects are too subtle, the sound effects too quiet, the acting too understated. I left feeling I had visited a planetarium, rather than having stood and wondered at the stars.

www.soundandfury.org.uk

Cirque Éloize: iD ¦ Photo: Theatre T & Cie / Valerie Remise

Cirque Éloize: iD

Cirque Éloize: iD ¦ Photo: Theatre T & Cie / Valerie Remise

In the tiny world of contemporary circuses it is rare to catch one as big, fat and juicy as this at a theatre near you. The crowd at the luxurious Wales Millennium Centre was purring with anticipation as the curtain went up on an expectedlyurban landscape of flats and boxes, seedy street-lampesque lighting, graffiti, video projections, shadows, city noises. It’s not a new idea: ‘urban’ has been à la mode in contemporary circus for several years – it wasn’t even new when iDwas first shown in 2009. But Eloize do it with style, with confidence, striking exactly the right balance between slick and rough-around-the-edges.

Have you ever seen a body popper battle with an inline skater? You’re curious though, right? The show starts by establishing a vague Montagues-and-Capulets style situation, prompting daring displays of skill, breakdance battles, slights perceived and gauntlets thrown down. A feeling of identities is built up through solo and group acts, of battles won and lost, of partnerships built. Allurban ones, mind. The narrative doesn’t extend any further than this, which doesn’t really matter, though it does feel an opportunity was missed here.
The star of the show was a natural-born-contortionist so bendy and graceful that on the rare occasion you caught her stood up straight you had that uncanny feeling you get when presented unexpectedly with someone upside down. She danced with an insectoid flow, pattering her legs around her head like cartoon antennae. Her love duet with a windmilling breakdancer presented some striking symmetries and was a complete, fresh-tasting surprise.

The whole-company numbers (such as an acrobatic jumprope piece) weren’t, on the whole, as well done as the specialist acts – but an exception was the crazy, energetic finale of trampoline tricks against whizz video projections. Using ledges above the trampoline to land on, it had the feel of a skateboard halfpipe – the artists seemed almost to be running up the walls and landing at the top, without the use of harnesses. When video projections made the ‘walls’ appear to move and change shape, the effect was confusing, exhilarating, impressive.

An exuberant, well-balanced show of high skills and some new ideas, with the sort of room for improvement that keeps the conversation flowing long after the show’s over.

www.cirque-eloize.com