LONDON INTERNATIONAL MIME FESTIVAL
The Armature of the Absolute – Buchinger’s Boot Marionettes – The Pit, London
This is punk theatre at its best. Marseille-based marionette circus Buchinger’s Boot is a glorious, gluttonous junkyard of scavenged paraphernalia and butchered remains. Its hideous inhabitants, with their glistening teeth and decomposed organicism, are more soulful and complete than any dollhouse could ever hold. This is no yearning Pinocchio or disembodied Petrouchka” these are voracious beings with ravenous desires, insatiable needs and an intent fearsome enough to challenge any actor.
Herald the conjuring of a disfigured, throbbing world of subterranean deviants and delirious misappropriation. The Armature of the Absolute is a delicious nightmare, a ‘theatre of metamorphosis’ by which filth and flatulence become a gruesome beauty and sordid monstrosity, a garish addiction.
An aptly macabre Barbican Pit became a ‘chamber of wonders’ with an extraordinary cast of characters, equally horrific and enthralling. At the fulcrum, a metaphysical duel between French writer Alfred Jarry – himself moustachioed dandy meets Chucky-esque pierrot – and his infamous fictional spawn, murderous ‘coprophile’ King Ubu” a hideously fanged, dry-retching baboon with a chattering set of teeth set deep in his glowing red ass.
We’ve all rallied with the odd French obscenity but this one takes the major theme of ‘merde’ to a whole new level as its so-called ‘scatalogical battle cry’. These are a pastiche of worlds where rose petals rain from the heavens as effortlessly as torrential cowpat. A powdered Amadeus, in Baroque finery and with chalice poised, attends the fetid treasure fresh from the bowels of his pelican muse. All manner of creatures climb in and out of a murky glass toilet bowl, its soiled seat a glorified throne, emerging dirty and dripping from their dark, dank, inexplicable operations.
Enter a chortling, eyeballing swine-creature, nostril hairs akimbo, who lurches greedily into the spout of the basin, guzzles and gorges the excretions. Fuelled by his faecal banquet, he begins a nauseous, nauseating heaving. Suddenly anticipating a tsunami of projectile body waste through the fourth wall, I was well into mental flight mode and planning a personal evacuation when he instead gave birth to a shivering, spindly-limbed, Handel-announced pterodactyl who took a few steps, slimy umbilicus trailing, and proceeded to rape the pelican, his monster parent an ecstatic, cheering voyeur.
In another strain, a naked and painfully sunburnt 80s rockabilly in a shopping trolley soft-shoes around his typewriter, apparently motivated to blog by the monkey king romancing the skeletons alongside, necrophiliac-style. This happy scene is interrupted by the arrival of an insectile alien creature in tuxedo and safari hat who biblically feeds his martini to the minions, inviting an absinthe-induced disco sequence.
The final act sees two diametrically offset rotary mechanisms: one an unrelenting and smoking-hot battering ram of pleasure, complete with voluptuous harlot attached, the other a sausage hurdy-gurdy wheeled by a lobster, pouring its proliferation of frankfurters into an expanding mountain of hot dogs which threatens to upstage everything in sight. Finally, following its hundred-odd predecessors, a mutated banger is born” black, phallic, polka-spotted. On cue, a shiny silver cannon saunters in on a ländler. The mutant is fed into the cannon, anticipation builds as we realise this to be something of a grand finale. There is a pregnant pause and, braced and expectant for a grandiose explosion, we are rewarded instead by the comparative hilarity a chirping pastoral utopia.
But is The Armature of the Absolute as nonsensical and abstract as it seems? We experience it as if from underwater, a glutinous, suffocating sound and visual dimension at a different part of the coral reef than we’re used to. The concepts are violent, bloodthirsty and offensive but encased in a honkytonk, clownish skin. Drugged by our unshockable Surrealist landscape, we are neither outraged nor disturbed by this alien ethical realm – a realisation that will likely come back to haunt us on reflection. This is Bohemian genius” welcome to Fairyland indeed.
Season Closed
