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A uniquely breathtaking, grotesque and perplexing tale of transformation from foulness to fabulousness.
Summary
Rating
Excellent
The fabulous MimeLondon festival celebrates non-verbal performance, showcasing exciting ways in which we as human beings can interact with and understand our world differently. Its opening piece this season is an extraordinary work from French/American company Les Antliaclastes that is visually stunning, quirkily humorous and enormously intriguing.
Just like the peculiar product that gives its name to this captivating production, Ambergris is a rare and curious thing. The story is a dark imagining of Pinocchio’s time in the belly of the whale, at the transformative moment where he considers what it would be to become a real boy. It conjures up a breathtaking, carnivalesque world, built around puppetry, masks and a magical, atmospheric soundscape.
There is so much to take in in this show. Immediately, it’s the stunning aesthetic and sensory components that seize your attention. The set is created from an imposing vintage fairground steam organ, with multiple moving automata reimagined in various forms. There we encounter puppet mermaids, objects zipping along a miniature rail track, lights flashing and flickering and water bubbling through tubes. Ancient silvered mirrors reflect the audience, making everyday humans a visible part of the experience although they appear nowhere else in the tale. It’s thrilling! Throughout, an eclectic mix of music – from fairground tunes to whaling shanties, electric sounds to Gounoud – generates a delightfully intriguing and enticing atmosphere. The whole production is a vortex of ideas about life and death, truth and lies, animation and transformation, which demands a serious suspension of disbelief in order for this weird world to come alive.
As the performance progresses, the organ’s keyboard is redefined as the worktable of a perfumer, from where she conducts her alchemical magic, seeking the perfect perfume. The perfumer’s mask replaces her head with a giant nose (helpful for the job!), and further sensory suggestions see skunks playfully dipped in the vats of scent. The perfume requires ambergris to anchor it. Bizarre as it may seem, this rare and highly sought after product is an excretion emitted from the intestines of a sperm whale. Although it is in itself repulsive, it offers unforeseen possibility, with its foulness required to achieve olfactory splendour.
Blending within the space is a grotesque mixture of at first seemingly disparate then unexpectedly intersecting objects, stories and characters: it’s a unique crucible where they too catalyse and transform. Pinocchio, Captain Ahab and Jonah are all drawn from their different worlds via their whaling connections. Together these odd objects create a thing of immense beauty, a performance that generates new and surprising perspectives and questions our perceptions and understandings. Metaphorically, pint-sized, perplexed Pinocchio, causing a blockage within the whale’s insides, is the irritant that causes the beast to excrete fragrance and wonder, just as this production does.
There are terrific performances here from the entire company (Karine Dumont, Patrick Sims, Nicolas Hubert and Richard Penny). I’d hesitate to use the word ‘subtle’ in a production that has a fabricated, active whale colon live on stage, but the puppetry is discreet and highly impressive, using varied skills involving masks, shadow puppets, marionettes, glove puppets and object manipulation. It’s all weird and wonderful, grubby but grandiose, and all round unforgettable.
Sometimes you leave a theatre a little bit changed by a show. This is one of those occasions. Just as Pinocchio finally causes the whale to expel him altered by his adventure, as an audience this experience leaves us collectively different – open mouthed, wonderstruck and perhaps rather bemused. Indeed, MimeLondon has once again rendered us speechless!
Writing, Direction, scenography and puppets: Patrick Sims
Masks and puppets: Joséphine Biereye
Costumes: Camille Lamy
Set construction and mechanics: Richard Penny and Nicolas Hubert
Sound creation and design: Karine Dumont
Lighting creation: Sophie Barraud and Jean Grison
Stage manager: Florent Klein
Les Antliaclastes’ Ambergris runs from Tuesday 23rd – Saturday 27th January as part of MimeLondon at the Barbican Centre.
Further information and bookings available here.
