Festival Theatre
The Toad Knew
King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Mary Brennan
five stars
The Toad, however, is not up for telling: that would impose some-one else’s ideas on your imagination – better by far to drink in all the fantastical sights and sounds of the eccentric lair that’s revealed when the red velvet curtain is swallowed up into the wings.
Better by far to attune your ears to the swooping cadences, the clawing gutteral depths of Mariama’s voice than go hunting clues in the lyrics of her song – this mysterious lady in red (velvet, as if she’d melted out of that curtain) isn’t vocalising clues in French, or English. Best of all, don’t fret about narrowing this exotic torrent of clowning and circus skills, slapstick and sudden beauty, into a neat little linear narrative. Do that, and you’ve thrown away the juice and the zest of James Thiérrée’s idiosyncratic caprices – and have left yourself with the pip.
Even without the band of talented, quirky performers who people his episodic fairytale, Thiérrée has contrived a wonderfully untoward theatrical experience. His set is a delicious overlap between Heath-Robinson’s absurd contraptions and Arthur Rackham’s elfin-fey illustrations – with a hint of the Mother Ship glowing aloft, at the centre of a whirligig of small, inter-connected “saucers”.
If there are mechanical marvels – often powered by sporadic, cranky, surges of light – there are flesh-and-blood marvels as well. Valérie Doucet’s acrobatic finesse, flick-flacking in rapid back-flips. Nguyen Thi Mai, an aerial sprite in the web of overhead cables. And Thiérrée himself, of course. A consummate rubber-boned comedic genius who can spin a hilarious fankle out of merely donning a jacket. And who can – in cahoots with Samuel Dutertre or Nédélec Yann, also members of Thiérrée’s Comapagnie du Hanneton – make everyday actions into a visual aria of wrong-footed (and handed) mayhem. The Toad knew this production was a kaleidoscope of magical surprises. All you need to know is that it is a triumph of quixotic dreaming.
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