Lucy Hopkins

Lucy Hopkins: Le Foulard

Lucy HopkinsInto the Spiegeltent, her ‘foulard’ billowing behind her, prances the compact, black-clad Lucy Hopkins, Artist. The stage platform is attained with intentionally awkward grace and our hostess introduces herself with grandiose prose, precise annunciation and enormous disdain for us, her captive audience. What follows is a beautifully constructed hour of playful interrogation into what it is to be an artist. An Artist, who, ‘like most’, makes work about herself. Lucy conjures three characters with deft use of her foulard – ‘it’s a bloody scarf, I made it myself,’ she exclaims later, when it all gets out of hand.

An aged crone, finger crooked just so, makes fleeting silent interventions. The passionate Spaniard, holding her arm aloft like a Roman senator, makes heavy work of an English language lesson: ‘he dips his biscuit, I have dipped my biscuit.’ The naïve, socially inept dreamer, with her long skirt and mad ideas, translates La Vie en Rose so we can all share her imagined joy. With great economy of movement and expression Lucy interweaves these characters as they fight for precedence and begin to upstage the Artist. How frustrated she becomes, held hostage by her own brilliance at acting. As the giggling dreamer begins to make friends with a chap in the second row, the Artist booms ‘It’s an art show; it has nothing to do with the audience!’

Having trained with Lecoq and Gaulier, it is no surprise that this is in essence a clown show, and whilst Lucy has ability in all of its forms she never overplays; her fine singing voice is reined in, her acrobatic skill evidenced in just one back-bend. There are hints of Liz Aggiss in the extravagant gestures, and of Joanna Neary’s Peg Bird character, with her arrogant despair at fellow artists. There is insight here too. So many actors fear becoming their characters; Kenneth Williams, Tony Hancock, June Brown – destined to be Dot Cotton forever. It pierces the conceit of the Artist as a somehow enlightened individual with greater insight than the rest of us.

Using the Spiegeltent’s colourful lighting for the occasional dramatic pose or solo, working with the space creatively, giving to the audience even when we are not worthy, Le Foulard is an elegantly crafted show. I take issue with Mr Gaulier, whose opinions Hopkins relates to us: she is not boring and she does not look like a sausage.

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About Lisa Wolfe

Lisa Wolfe is a freelance theatre producer and project manager of contemporary small-scale work. Companies and people she has supported include: A&E Comedy, Three Score Dance, Pocket Epics, Jennifer Irons,Tim Crouch, Liz Aggiss, Sue MacLaine, Spymonkey and many more. Lisa was Marketing Manager at Brighton Dome and Festival (1989-2001) and has also worked for South East Dance, Chichester Festival Theatre and Company of Angels. She is Marketing Manager for Carousel, learning-disability arts company.