MARK MAIER OBJECTS. To 29 January.
London
MARK MAIER OBJECTS
by Mark Maier
New End Theatre To 29 January 2005
9.20pm no performance 15,16,23 Jan
Runs 1hr No interval
TICKETS: 0870 033 2733
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 January
Funny man, funny hats, funny sort of life.Plenty of clowns break down in tears, whole operas full of them. Mark Maier does things a more sensible way: first the traumatic childhood then the transmutation into comedy. Don't grow up sad, turn your torture into other's laughter. Get in some revenge along the way, too.
It can't have been easy being a child with destructive impulses (even if the pyromania was just a phase), going to a school where collecting unexploded mines was the idea of a youthful hobby. And there's a certain sense of the unconventional about pursuing an attractive girl by lobbing a teddy bear strapped to chocolates as you pass her on your bike.
Most people would have to struggle to invent a life like that. Lucky Mark Maier has it to hand. And, finding other people tough going (who wouldn't with an uncle who chucks toffees like surprise grenades from behind the sofa he's sitting on?), Maier turns to chats with everyday objects.
After a brilliantly busy opening where the choice of a shirt for the gig shows his indecisiveness in no uncertain way, Maier sets out his life's in-tray, becoming a felt-tip pen, sock, matchstick and grain of sand (among other entities) through the adoption of fantasticated balaclava-like headgear. His features and voice undergo protean changes in a series of mini-scenes which show that being owned by, coming into contact with or merely being in the presence of this man produces a melancholy fatalism in the most inanimate of entities.
Unless the contact is by way of being an audience, in which case a good time is seriously threatened for all up to a climactic conclusion where a number of teddy bears illumine Maier's lovelorn youth until, in therapy he produces plentiful footwear plus a basket and we're all invited to put a sock in it.
Mark Maier/Objects: Mark Maier
Director: Huw Thomas
Costume: www.extraordinarydesign.com
2005-01-15 00:21:57