METAMORPHOSIS and Feeast. To 23 November.
London.
METAMORPHOSIS
by Moscow Shadow Theatre.
Hoxton Hall 28-29 October 2008.
Runs 1hr No interval.
Graphic theatre – with a Feeast to follow.
No, not Kafka, nor Berkoff. More Rolf Harris, in a sense. The metamorphoses here occur on paper and glass. Ilya and Maya Epelbaum perform with abundant inventiveness to adults and children in their own small Moscow Theatre. Two nights in October saw them at Hoxton.
At first there are the shadow projections of line-drawings made on glass. A face transforms into a fish that swims away. Or a fish becomes a face. Faces, fish and ships recur. An elongated dog acquires a master, then starts elongating and contracting in time with the man’s concertina playing.
And, being Russian, there’s a depth to the series of portrayals. A fine young face turns negative and threatening with added lines. A smooth, babyishly happy visage gradually ages as the miseries of life are endured, ending buried in the ground.
The ground resurfaces in the next section, where images are created and transformed in soil spread across a projected glass panel; all set to the music of Chopin. But it’s in the last two parts of the programme that music matters more specifically.
Apparently, Tchaikovsky set out to write Swan Lakeas an opera before it became a ballet. Here, drawn images familiar from the show’s opening section reappear, along with many others as the (ballet) music accompanies illustrations of the story - among them, a haunting picture of swans on water, their reflections showing the human faces of the transformed characters.
Finally, a rollicking comedy based on Mozart’s Magic Flute, exploiting the idea of the unheroic hero Tamino, who is frightened by a dragon and collapses. All this section’s operated in the open, projecting images from cut-out and reassembled paper pieces rather than from behind the show’s white curtain. The little Tamino’s independent arms and legs move around as he stands, falls, or runs different directions. A section of dragon is inventively reassembled as the Queen of the Night, while the magic flute gets snipped out of her hair.
The show may return to London next autumn. The Hoxton performances were co-organised by Russian Act, which presents a variety of Russian art-forms up to the end of November (details: www.russianact.co.uk.)
And by FeEast, a series of East European events snaking through the year (details: www.feast.com), apparently the single-handed work of indefatigable Diana Cezar, continuing during
November at Riverside Studios with Russia’s Top9 in hip-hop dance-theatre piece Accents (18-19 November 8pm) and Anglo-Slovene co-production Don Juan Who? 21 Nov (8pm), 22 Nov (4pm & 8pm, 23 Nov (6pm). Tickets for both from Riverside Studios: 020 8237 1111.
2008-11-12 00:06:19