ORGANILLO: Stephen Mottram: Touring
ORGANILLO: Stephen Mottram
Touring: Details stephenmottram@netscapeonline.co.uk
Runs: 1hr: no interval
Review: Rod Dungate, mac, 18th O ctober 2001
Mottram beautifully recreates a popular nineteenth century puppet entertainment for the twenty-first century in a performance the like of which you probably haven't seen before
Stephen Mottram performs with puppets and automata: in ORGANILLO he has turned the popular, traditional nineteenth century marionette 'under water ballet' into an intriguing, sometimes amusing but always beautiful sequence gently echoing the mystery of human reproduction.
His performance is absolutely like an underwater ballet - stage-size. Into his dreamlike world swim large fish and small fish, on their own and in shoals. An isolated humanoid creature swims in from time to time to have a look at what's going on and to lend a hand. An octopus appears and fish are persuaded to swim into it (they are like sperm swimming along a fallopian tube.)
The humanoid creature swims in pushing a large sphere which sheds layer after layer after layer. Finally fish bury their heads in it . . . And so the story goes on.
Accompanying this all the way through is a haunting musical score by Sebastian Castagna. It comprises notes and other sounds from a mechanical instrument called an organillo: this is combined with sighs and other human sounds.
The effect of the performance is electric: heightened by near silence in the auditorium. Director, Deana Rankin, has orchestrated the whole with sensitivity. You could literally hear a pin drop in the final moments when Mottram opens the silver egg and places a small creature on a sea-bed rock. With beautiful and graceful puppetry, this being learns to swim – or fly in water would be a better analogy. And as it learns, I swear every member of the audience was willing it to succeed. Magic indeed.
If you want to see something the like of which you're unlikely to have seen before, then give this one a whirl.
Performed (puppets and automata designed and made): Stephen Mottram
Music: Sebastian Castagna
Director: Deana Rankin
Stage Design: Simon Scullion
Lighting: Kenneth Parry
2001-10-21 22:29:57