London International Mime Festival, Barbican - review

10 April 2012

L'Immediat, Barbican
***

Translunar Paradise, Barbican Pit
***

In these sluggish January days, the London International Mime Festival continues to provide a welcome burst of (silent) clamour. L'Immédiat (The Unknown), from Camille Boitel and six collaborators, is a vibrant 60-minute commentary on our tumultuous modern world, where all is frenetic and kinetic and everyone is, quite literally, at an angle to reality.

The opening salvo in this series of short scenes is the showstopper, as a couple return home only to have everything, including the walls themselves, collapse around their ears. The choreography of all this chaos - the pages of a book even fall out as the woman tries to read - is precision-hewn and eerily balletic. The unexpected continues to unfold in some inspired rubble-based routines but there are longueurs along the way as the stage is reset. I was, however, especially taken by the mysterious man-woman in the purple dress, perpetually hiding in the wardrobe.

The thing about mime is that you have to be able to see it. My seat in the badly-raked row B of the Pit didn't permit an excess of visibility but that didn't stop me from appreciating Theatre Ad Infinitum's elegant, elegiac meditation on ageing and loss.

The piece, starring George Mann and Deborah Pugh as a loving long-married couple shattered by the wife's death, is strongly reminiscent of that magnificent sequence at the beginning of the film Up and is peculiarly life-affirming even as life ebbs away. There are extended flashbacks to the pair as joy-filled, twinkle-toed young 'uns; for these Mann and Pugh take off their affecting, wrinkled masks.

Some sections are far less clear than others and the timeline could certainly use some sharpening but throughout Kim Heron provides plangent, expertly tailored accordion accompaniment.

Both until January 21 (020 7638 8891, mimelondon.com)

The London International Mime Festival

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