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C Arts Alto – studio
A taste of the absurdity of war. This captivating show may be short but sweet, but it has bite.Summary
Rating
Excellent
Italian theatre company Batisfera bring a battalion of important questions to the table – quite literally – at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, with their captivating 30 minute show The Gummy Bears’ Great War.
Set on a tiny tabletop, the play is told totally in Italian, with English subtitles. A voiceover explains that on this morning the nation of the Gummy Bears woke from a state of dormancy, sure in the knowledge that they must attack the neighbouring nation of the dinosaurs. No reason is given for the decision, and the bears prepare themselves. The dinosaurs, we later discover, are a much larger (in every sense!), bureaucratic race with little interest in the Gummy Bears.
This is an aesthetically beautiful production, the use of light giving an artistic quality to the tiny candies as their insides glow with vibrant colour in the semi-darkness. And it’s on this very table that we meet the first formation of bears – Lemon Yellow, Apple Green, Raspberry Red – and all their many compatriots. The host of almost identical mass-produced sweets is cleverly given individuality, as tiny lamps spotlight them and each are named, exposing their personal vulnerability and value. Their tale becomes a thrilling adventure as we relate to each bear, understand their jeopardy, contemplate commitment, loss and the value of these everyday lives described. We come to learn of each one’s feelings towards the war, their sense of duty and their conviction that lives must be sacrificed for the greater good. Indeed, the unfortunate messenger sent to deliver the declaration of war is the first casualty, chewed up and casually spat out in a graphically violent (yet tasty) action.
More and more bears are named as the army grows until at one point the audience gasps when the Gummy Bears’ army is revealed in its enormous entirety. Yet it’s always clear they are edible: in the context of war they are disposable – cannon fodder on a huge scale.
It’s the use of scale that gives the story a real sense of epic proportions, with the small audience encouraged to focus in on the tiny figures, concentrating on their story not only because it is miniaturised but because is also being translated. The words claim space, standing sizeably, starkly and importantly before us. Then in the land of the dinosaurs, roles switch to the two performers (Valentina Fadda and Leonardo Tomasi) as full-sized actors rather than puppeteers, diminishing the bears still further, whilst emphasising the dominant dinosaur power that will destroy them.
The Gummy Bears’ Great War offers a peculiar, absurd and totally intriguing set up, but as dramaturgy it really works, allowing us to consider some really important concepts by engaging with colourful sweets: the absurdity of war; the unfathomable determination of a nation to pursue its own tragically predictable destruction; the existential need to find meaning in the meaningless; the role of the state in conscription and war. It’s bold, beautiful and bonkers. But it will give you pause for thought, and you will never look at a Gummy Bear in the same way again. Bravo Batisfera!
Written and directed by: Angelo Trofa
The Gummy Bears’ Great War runs at C Alto – studio until 25th August. Further details and tickets can be found here.
