One recurring theme in the physical/visual work seen at the London International Mime Festival is man’s relationship with space and with physical forces. These shows may involve some contortionism, some trompe l’oeil design, some precise choreography of human interaction with usually inanimate objects. Sometimes such work can be revelatory: I remember with joy my first exposure to Compagnie 111 at the Mime Fest several years ago. Sometimes, however, it is simply there. And sometimes it may even shade into a kind of self-congratulation. Claudio Stellato’s L’Autre, I am afraid, moves between the two latter categories.
    
In dim light a man slowly crosses the stage, carrying a small-to-medium-sized four-legged cabinet on his shoulders. With agonising slowness he crouches, shifts its weight to his neck then lets it settle on the floor. He clambers over, around and into it (it is barely big enough to accommodate an exceptionally crouched human form). Even more slowly, over a period of ten minutes or so, a longer cabinet has been slowly emerging from the darkness at the back of the stage. Finally, it swings on to its base, oscillates and comes to a gradual and only momentary halt. Stellato’s movements in, out and round now involve both objects, and also entail several instances of seeming to balance the larger on top of the smaller in ways that are physically impossible.
    
It is all highly deliberate and slow-mo. The darkness, and the help of Martin Firket (who also resembles Stellato closely enough in this quarter-light), give the cabinets lives and unusual properties of their own. But it does not connect. Perhaps this is because the human figure itself feels so “other” that we feel no bond with it; there is certainly no display of thought or emotion. Indeed, somewhat bizarrely for a piece lasting less than 50 minutes, there may be an element of durational aesthetic to the work: “Let’s see how slow we can make this without losing the audience.” Not nearly that slow, is the verdict from Row N. Still, if nothing else, the sequence in which Stellato’s upper torso protrudes from the smaller cabinet and he drags himself and it across the stage shows us what a centaur designed by Ikea would look like.

Written for the Financial Times.