New company Black Fish invite audiences to visit Alaska, a weird and sometimes wonderful environment, inspired by wild North American landscapes, and focusing on one man’s calamitous experiences with them.
This is a new company underpinned by the work of an old: both performers and the writer, Carl Grose, are old collaborators with Kneehigh, and the show’s language exhibits some recognisable features. First we meet John (Craig Johnson) who explains to the audience that he is here to present ‘an inspirational, interactive seminar’ and, by way of this seminar, ‘a story that will move you’. In doing so, he hopes to answer a question that has been haunting him: why is his life so empty? He explains that part of his seminar will constitute the screening of a home-movie style film sent to him and made by Justin (Giles King). This ‘film’ forms the main thrust of the performance, and is in fact live action, depicting Justin’s ambitious, wacky, and nearly self-destructive adventures in the wilds of Alaska. At times the live-action appears to be fast-forwarded and rewound by John, displaying Justin/King’s expert and hilarious freeze-frame abilities.
When he is not giving his ‘seminar’, John/Johnson doubles-up to play burly, lonely, affectionate ‘Babe’, a large, wandering roughneck with an unlikely name, whose knife-wielding antics are cut short when he overhears Justin reading an infamously titillating text by torchlight inside his tent. So begins their curious friendship, which brings each character some level of satisfaction in the increasingly hostile environment, and eventually leads to Justin having a life-affirming revelation on a mountaintop at end of the play…
There is a lot to be enjoyed here. The company skilfully present a simple but transforming set to depict various Alaskan-inspired scenes. Deft design and dexterous execution supports a style of physical storytelling that will be familiar to fans of Kneehigh. At the performance I went to, the audience seemed to enjoy and get lost in a do-it-yourself style of theatre – one where Justin has to beat his way through hand-thrown snow-flurries; where mountain peaks and moose-heads are made from hoisted/folded sleeping bags respectively (and surprisingly effectively); where crevasses are easy to imagine under the three-foot high climbing rope Justin must teeter across; and where camp-fires are lit in tin cans with wire wool and a 9v battery (‘you should try this at home, kids!’ recommends Johnson with a mischievous grin at the audience). There is a strong comedy element and there was a lot of laughter in the audience throughout the performance. However, although this humour relies (somewhat uncomfortably) on stereotypes, and although it is definitely zany, I wouldn’t call it ‘Pythonesque’ as the show’s publicity does. In terms of audience interaction, there are some amusing moments involving intriguing furry shapes on the ends of long sticks, as well as some colourful lighting effects, all administered inexpertly by audience members.
John’s initial question, ‘why is my life so empty?’, which is repeated at the end of the show once his identity and relationship to Justin is revealed, seems at once serious and tongue-in-cheek. In relation to John’s suggestion at the beginning of the performance that ‘this was a story that will move you’, I wouldn’t say I was left out in the cold. I was moved and transported imaginatively to other places by way of the ingenuity of the production, and was moved almost to tears by the humour in places… But I did remain slightly at a remove from a narrative or conceptual coherence that would have driven the piece and connected me to it more profoundly.