With the enticing premise ‘What if Captain Scott actually perished whilst saving the world from aliens?’ this anarchic comedy provides an irreverently inventive take on the ‘real’ story behind Captain Scott’s 1912 expedition to the South Pole. Gonzo Moose are known for a farcical approach to storytelling, combining clowning, physical theatre and improvisation. These elements were cleverly synthesised under Abigail Anderson’s slick direction, framed by the concept that we the audience are attending the Open Your Brain 2016 conference. This title is displayed on a cloth screen courtesy of a wobbly-looking overhead projector, and we are apparently here to discover the truth about Captain Scott’s journey. Posing the important question ‘What do you know, how do you know it, and how do you know that you know that you know it?’, the three-strong ensemble undertake a mission to debunk the official story. Using their patented formula of ‘truth, fact = truthfact!’ they aim to show how something altogether more alien occurred. This provides an effective comic hook for the piece, which revels in its silliness, with a delightful sense of playfulness throughout.
The conference’s team of presenters, led by ‘George Cranston, BA’ are strongly characterised as bumbling and under-confident, tripping over wires and lines and introducing well-timed gags, such as some hilarious (and all too familiar to any conference attendee) stage business involving passing George a water bottle which he never opens. This successfully sets the tone for the piece, which makes the most of intertextual and contemporary references (the ‘poems’ which Scott writes are all opening lines from popular songs, and some scenes are reminiscent of The Thing); physical comedy; and Brechtian techniques including ensemble playing, multi-rolling indicated by the exchange of basic costume pieces, and direct audience address. The talented cast (Mark Dawson, Alys Torrance, and Ben Whitehead) are extremely skilled at using these devices, deftly switching between characters and emotions. The visual aesthetic underscores these stylistic elements too: we are presented with an effective palette of Arctic hues, and although perhaps the use of OHP projections and home-made looking props is nothing new, the inventive ways in which they are used is really engaging.
We are introduced to the history of the 1912 mission, in a lecture littered with numerous ‘facts’, well-paced asides, and some effective audience interaction. We are shown Scott’s camp and team in The Antartica via the excellent multi-rolling, and the narrative is interrupted by well-placed ‘lecture’ sections which both re-cap the action and introduce what is to come, to an uproarious response from the audience each time. There follows a comic interlude involving a humorously bad penguin costume and accompanying song, although this section runs on a little too long. This was my only real criticism of the piece; a little more pace at points would have helped to keep the action moving on.
As the narrative progresses (largely through the perspectives of the expedition’s characters) we are introduced to concepts of magnetism, with the hint that this information might come in handy later on…
However, all is not well on this mission, a fact brought gloriously to the forefront by one character beginning to suffer with a ‘pustulating’ rash which seems alien in origin and is illustrated through the inventive use of bubble wrap. The sense of doom is further highlighted in an ill-planned cabaret evening, with an unforgettably dark accordion song performed with real aplomb by Ben Whitehead, warning that everyone is going to die. As the tension mounts, the piece’s design elements really come in to their own; a tent is constructed very inventively; there is a particularly effective alien attack sequence performed with verve and imaginative use of material; and hilarious utilisation of white plastic sheeting to show the characters’ progress in miniature through the snow.
Inevitably, Scott’s end finally comes, but pleasingly it is every bit as heroic and abstract in nature as the production leads us to expect.