Popcorn Machine – review
Expertly controlled ... Philine Dahlmann (top) and Elske van Gelder in Popcorn Machine.
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
The Mayans got it wrong – the world didn't stop spinning
at the end of last year – but circus company My!Laika play out their
own distinctly quirky form of catastrophe in this small but pleasing
show. "What are we doing here?" asks juggler and trick cyclist,
Salvatore Frasca, before peering into the auditorium and asking the same
of us. When there is no answer, he shrugs a little bitterly, and says:
"The show must go on."
This "domestic apocalypse", as it is dubbed, certainly does go
on: real-life juggling balls are suddenly produced from behind a
projected image of a fountain on a screen; an explosive blast rains what
appear to be severed limbs. Heads roll across the stage; a tiger flies
through the air; disembodied hands play the piano. Meanwhile, a popcorn
machine spews out its contents like a volcanic eruption and the smell of
burning pervades as alarm bells ring.
If this sounds relentlessly downbeat, it's not. There is a gentle, absurdist humour threaded through the show. Throughout, there's a sense that some ridiculous cosmic joke is being played out, in which both performers and audience are the punchline.
Like Forced Entertainment's cunning creations of chaos, the mess is expertly controlled, the clumsiness deliberate: in reality these performers are highly skilled, not just in circus but also on various musical instruments. Their physicality explodes across the stage as if it cannot be contained. Philine Dahlmann and Elske van Gelder's hand-to-hand sequence begins as a mock bullfight and turns into a catfight with hair pulled. And aggression and anxiety are never far away: Frasca ends up in his underpants wobbling on a trick cycle, then completely humiliated in a heap on the floor. Eva Ordonez-Benedetto hangs from the trapeze from her head, which is tilted back as if in agony; a kind of crucifixion.
This show, presented as part of the London International Mime Festival, may be fragile, but what's intriguing is how it borrows more from the techniques of experimental theatre than it does from the big top. It's an end-of-the-world cabaret full of the frail absurdity of humanity.
If this sounds relentlessly downbeat, it's not. There is a gentle, absurdist humour threaded through the show. Throughout, there's a sense that some ridiculous cosmic joke is being played out, in which both performers and audience are the punchline.
Like Forced Entertainment's cunning creations of chaos, the mess is expertly controlled, the clumsiness deliberate: in reality these performers are highly skilled, not just in circus but also on various musical instruments. Their physicality explodes across the stage as if it cannot be contained. Philine Dahlmann and Elske van Gelder's hand-to-hand sequence begins as a mock bullfight and turns into a catfight with hair pulled. And aggression and anxiety are never far away: Frasca ends up in his underpants wobbling on a trick cycle, then completely humiliated in a heap on the floor. Eva Ordonez-Benedetto hangs from the trapeze from her head, which is tilted back as if in agony; a kind of crucifixion.
This show, presented as part of the London International Mime Festival, may be fragile, but what's intriguing is how it borrows more from the techniques of experimental theatre than it does from the big top. It's an end-of-the-world cabaret full of the frail absurdity of humanity.
