At the crossroads of puppetry, dance and theatre, Dimanche is an award-winning co-production by Belgian companies Focus and Chaliwaté. It is set sometime in the near future, when humanity has failed to adapt to the new environmental reality of climate change. Lisa Wolfe witnesses – and wonders: when will we ever learn?

It is Sunday the 2nd of February: Candelmas, the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox; called Groundhog Day in the USA, when a ground squirrel popping up from a hole predicts the weather for the coming months. The term has come to mean something that endlessly repeats in the same way.

What a great excuse for a day of celebration to herald the end of winter. Or a plot for a romantic film. It’s become a folkloric truth. And yet…

Having just, the day before, watched Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté’s subtly devastating Dimanche, I’m having doubts. For haven’t we been here before – building flood defences, planting forests, pushing catalytic converters? As we diligently separate our recycling, or disrupt West-End drama (The Tempest, of course) the planet boils, burns, shrivels and melts (all at once!) and those who could force change do exactly the opposite. What the blazes can art do in the face of such catastrophe?

My wing-woman for today is creator and performer Liz Aggiss, and, once the standing ovation has dampened down, we spend some time attempting to define what it is we have seen. Is there a term for this superbly skilled, multi-media creation that so neatly satirises our denial of climate change? We see shared qualities with the work of Berlin (also Belgium-based) in the integration of film and innate understanding of what makes a strong stage picture. 

The action here centres on two trios; a family trying to live normally amid worsening weather conditions, and three slightly inept but intrepid film-makers attempting to document climactic forces in action.

These parallel stories play out in alternate sequences at a pace that feels comfortably measured. The couple eat their breakfast despite the melting furniture; their Sunday roast amid a typhoon. This is impressive high-wind acting – they’re practically horizontal against the bannisters as the room is torn apart. It would be funny in a cartoon, but we’ve seen the projected footage from the dwindling team of documentarists. This is dangerous. We laugh at our peril.

Puppetry breathes life into materials; you can almost see the twinkle in grandma’s eye as she shoots an ice-cube down her nightie; feel the polar bear’s roar when its floating home splinters. Bodies become landscapes for vehicles to travel across, starting small, coming into life size; a familiar trope beautifully realised here, particularly when one landmass is a pale, vulnerable, naked torso. 

Throughout the piece Brice Cannavo’s thrilling sound design sculpts the space, whether through a record deck or the bill of a shrieking flamingo. The only human voice is that of Paul Simon on the truck radio, his light tone and chirpy lyrics suggestive of a different place and time. 

Dimanche is a bit of a magic trick; calm and amusing on the surface, devilishly menacing below. We chuckle uneasily at the comedy of the situations, the cleverness of the multi-tasking cast  – Julie Tenret (director of Compagnie Focus), Sandrine Heyraud and Sicaire Durieux (Compagnie Chaliwaté’s creators) – then get a sucker punch at film footage of a giant incoming wave. There is destruction and death under the sea too, as backlit fish flit anxiously away from a predatory shark. Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin paints with light, from the simplicity of a hand-held car-light (with dangling deodoriser, nice touch) to dazzling strobe effects. A moth gyrates in front of a headlamp – the insects and the sharks will survive us all. 

Focus & Chaliwaté have made an extraordinary work of visual theatre, cinematic performance, and stage spectacle. Total theatre indeed. If they can keep making such detailed, exquisite, powerful shows, the arts (at least in Belgium) are in safe hands. The planet alas, is in ours.

 Photos: Mihaela Bodlovic

Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté: Dimanche, presented by Sadler’s Wells at The Peacock, in association with MimeLondon, 29 January to 1 February 2025 www.sadlerswells.com 

MimeLondon is a new curatorial project promoting thought provoking, unusual work, created by Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig, directors of London International Mime Festival (LIMF), which ended in 2023 after five decades of award-winning success www.mimelondon.com