Tag: mimelondon

Bigre, Tristan Bernard (Paris), 24 mai 2016, © Fabienne Rappeneau

REVIEW: Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau: BIGRE/Fish Bowl at Peacock Theatre

Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

Rating: 4 out of 5.

“absurdity of life with tear and joy”

Created by Pierre Guillois and co-written by Agathe L’Huillier and Olivier Martin-Salvan, BIGRE/Fish Bowl, part of MimeLondon 2026, is a love letter from Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau to our perpetually exhausting and occasionally absurd contemporary life that, at moments, still sparkles with warmth and tenderness.

Fish Bowl does not follow a straightaway storyline with so-called character stake or arc. Instead, it depicts the daily life of three lodgers living on the top floor of a dilapidated apartment building (design: Laura Léonard). A big guy (Martin-Salvan) is intensely neurotic about hygiene, living in his all whitened lodge suggestive of a near-future smart home in Matrix with a sound- controlled toilet hidden under his bed. His neighbour is a tall, wiry man (Guillois) who loves to enjoy his cupboard food while listening to broadcasts. A pregnant woman (L’Huillier), literally carrying a fish bowl in her hand, moves to the last empty lodge.

The trio clearly have their own unmistaken personalities: the big, germ-phobic guy has a waste chute in his lodge, and hoovers his shoes each time when he gets home. However, this tiny lodge continues to trap him into troubles that brutally shatter his dream of hyper cleanliness. The tall man, a bit artsy and nerdy, seems to be the most unassuming among the three, self-contained to his tiny space. The woman, on the other hand, pursues a very conventional middle-class lifestyle obsessed with quality, only to find it collapse not only just because of the shabbiness of her tiny lodge, but also because of the fragile and ultimately unfulfillable promise on that lifestyle. 

To some extent, Fish Bowl feels like a mixture of Black Books and Knallerfrauen. In a way, its humour is sharp and critical: those paper-thin walls continue to cause fuss. Tall guy’s cupboard food can easily travel to the big guy, and the big guy’s wig may fly into his neighbour’s soup bowl through his skylight window on a super windy day. This physical precarity sets a sharp contrast to their aspirations, whether it is techno-utopian, hippie-esque or cheesy middle-class, layering bare the absurdity of life.

Of course, Fish Bowl does not collapses into cynical nullity. It remains a current of romantic gentleness where humanity and friendship still sparkle as solid and true. After a “mock” curtain call, there is one last ever laugh-out-loud but heartfelt moment, subtly foreshadowed throughout the show and eventually materialised. With the recurring soundtrack “Happy Together” (Sound Design: Roland Auffret and Loïc Le Cadre), *Fish Bowl* ultimately leaves the message that happiness per se is something already bittersweet.

Credit: Mihaela Bodlovic

REVIEW:Dimanche by Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté

Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

Rating: 5 out of 5.

a surreal yet gentle puppetry-storytelling that melds absurd humour and poignant tragedy

As part of MimeLondon, Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté’s Dimanche is a surreal yet tender meditation on climate change and environmental protection. It is a tour de force of puppetry, where meticulously crafted, lifelike puppets, including polar bear, migratory bird, and an elderly lady, serve not only as characters but also as allegories for our warming world. With a “rule-of-three” comedy structure fused with Lecoqesque movements, the performance interweaves absurdity and tragedy with its alarming prophecy.

The opening scene features three journalists (or scientists) driving to the Arctic Circle to observe and shoot its ecosystem. You might never imagine that a physical mime can actually realise the cinematic sequence from a long shot, a medium and eventually a close-up. The puppeteer-performers transform their bodies into snow-capped mountains for model cars to navigate. Gradually, a larger-scale model enters the scene, and ultimately, the “camera” shifts to reveal the trio inside the vehicle, driving and eating. Equally breathtaking is the auditory precision and unrivalled delicacy of sound technology on display (Brice Cannavo). Together with the scene sequence, you may discern the slight volume differences of the background music (Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”)

As the story goes on, one journalist accidentally plummets through fissures in ice and unfortunately loses his life. A footage (Tristan Galand) seamlessly links this human tragedy with the animal world, where a polar bear cub forever separates from her mother by melting ice. The puppetry is so vivid that even with the puppeteer in view, you momentarily forget they are mere puppets, but view them as real.

Global warming affects humans as well. We then witness a family battling against heat, where a couple uses an array of electric fans to cool themselves, and an ice bucket offers their puppet-portrayed mother a refreshing reprieve. Under endless heatwaves, accompanied by an operatic soundscape, their furniture gradually and mysteriously melts in a surreal, almost magical manner, like a Dali painting. Suddenly, the old lady loses her life out of a shocking electrocution when operating on a floor lamp, which functions abnormally due to relentless and unstable weather condition. The rule of three applies again, only this time in a tragic way.

This darkly comic yet deeply tragic tableau sets the tone for what is to come. A tornado deprives another journalist’s life, and a migratory bird is forced to crash through the window of the bereaved family, who in turn absurdly roasts the bird for a feast. With nice dress, glasses of wine and an eternally-blown-out candle, the stupid couple fails to enjoy the bird as the hurricane blows everything away. A tsunami devours the last journalist as well as the family’s sleeping patriarch, who are now drifting in the water, absurdly co-existing alongside with sharks, jellyfishes and his kitchenware. An alarm endeavours to wake him up, but ultimately fails.

In the last scene, writers, directors and major performers Julie Tenret, Sicaire Durieux, and Sandrine Heyraud display some mercy, warm emotion and a glimmer of hope. Jellyfish, a symbol of earth’s emerging, thriving prosperity even without human species, is exquisitely performed through hand puppetry. This underwater scene, bathed in striking black with an eerie, almost mystical quality, showcases excellent precision from lighting (Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin), enabling the puppeteers to remain unseen.

Finishing with the last journalist surviving the tsunami in a lifeboat and clumsily fishing out the family’s water bottle, Dimanche delivers a gentle storytelling. In a world often bombarded by overt propaganda and self-important declarations, the performance opts for a quiet, reflective tone that speaks both to the heart and to the mind. The interplay between the animals’ domestic warmth and the stark, surreal imagery of numb and indifferent humanity compels us to ask: How much time do we have left? Just like the trio team’s camera, the battery is already low.