It is not yet time to ask whether the
London International Mime Festival is still necessary, but it is
certainly the case that the various flavours of physical, visual and
interdisciplinary work gathered in this fortnight under the umbrella of
“mime” are much more familiar to audiences now than when the Festival
was founded in 1977. Crossover between genres and forms is almost
routine now, and there are a number of recognised and trusted brands
and outlets, such as the Aurora Nova venue on the Edinburgh Fringe,
where the Sadari Movement Laboratory’s version of
Woyzeck was lauded last summer.
This Korean company has taken Georg Büchner’s unfinished,
fragmentary yet seminal 1836 play, which anticipated Expressionism by
almost a century, and through a vigorous physical interpretation have
paradoxically imbued it with grace and delicacy. Even its notes of
humour seem gentler. The programme notes speak of director Do-Wan Im
and his eleven performers “using chairs as a changeable metaphor”,
which is precious but accurate. Apart from arranging their wooden
chairs to indicate various locations from funfair to forest the
performers conduct military drill with them, use them as pillories and
so on; in the medical examination scene, Jae-Won Kwon as Woyzeck lies
rigid, supported only by the backs of two upright chairs at shoulder
and ankle. The
tango nuevo
music of Astor Piazzolla infuses the action with a yearning which is at
once sensual and melancholy.
Algerian-born Allel Nedjari and Israeli Amit Lahav, the duo who
constitute Gecko, are literally
The
Arab And The Jew in their piece about the conflict which
bedevils their peoples. They are extremely conscious of the sensitivity
of the issue, and the readiness of numerous viewers to over-interpret
every little moment. Perhaps as a consequence, in 50 minutes they say
nothing much at all, either literally or figuratively. Two men fall to
earth after a restaurant explosion. They quarrel over an orange in an
otherwise bare square of sand; they box; they conduct a dialogue in
which words are replaced by artillery fire; they engage in violent
slapstick to Spike Jones’ version of “You Always Hurt The One You
Love”. Ho, I’m afraid, hum. Little of Gecko’s trademark games with
space and dimensional orientation (which way
is up?) is evident, and even less
of originality in either questioning or observation.
Written for the Financial
Times.