Nicole Mossoux and Patrick Bonté are Mime Festival regulars, and if their latest visit is anything to go by, they haven't changed their bleak view of humankind. In Nuit sur Le Monde, the six performers look as if they have been torn from the soil, pale and defenceless, the men like scraggy roots and the women misshaped bulbs. All shiver and grope in a semi-naked state through unremitting gloom.
This solemn opening starts the 80-minute triptych, which then time-travels to what looks like a mildly sinister party for urban types in towelling robes. These blank-faced beauties (the women like Carla Bruni, the men like Dr No) stand in vaguely menacing positions that suggest sadistic goings on. Then a woman takes her pants off, everyone else follows, and with nary a stitch they enact scenes of birth and death - thankfully, not copulation. The final section sees them in cocktail attire, rocking impassively in blood-red light.
The piece, faultlessly performed, conveys an intense sense of vulnerable humanity. However, it is so portentous, so bone-crushingly earnest that diminishing returns set in. You just can't watch something this po-faced for this long. Instead of acknowledging your own frailty, you fight the urge to shout: "Put your clothes on or you'll catch a chill."
Until 16 Jan. LIMF until 27 Jan (www.mimefest.co.uk).
London International Mime Festival: Mossoux-Bonte: Nuit Sur Le Monde
Purcell Room, Southbank Centre
The South Bank Centre,Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
