THIS is shaping up to be a singularly puppet-friendly edition of the London International Mime Festival. Now in its 28th year, the festival, which runs until the end of this month, is offering wordless German mask theatre, virtual juggling from France and a rollicking Belgian commedia dell’arte cookery show. On top of all that comes some of the best of contemporary British puppetry.
The London company Faulty Optic gets the ball rolling this week with Horsehead, a dark-edged romantic fable about accidents, old age and equine obsession.
The lead character is a blue-skinned, bright-eyed codger who has loved horses since childhood. This erstwhile stable boy was part of a vaudevillian double-act as the back end of a trick horse. His partner was a former circus dancer whose career hit the skids after she fell, breaking her leg so badly that he had to cut it off and replace it with a prosthetic hoof. Now he lies dying in a hospital bed, haunted by his memories.
This potentially epic story is told with an endearingly small-scale, hand-made ingenuity typical of Faulty Optic. The show was conceived and designed by the company founders, Liz Walker and Gavin Glover, who double as entirely black-clad and expert manipulators of the puppet characters.
The tale unfolds on and around a couple of islands composed of frames, curtains and deliberately grungy mechanical devices that work a treat.
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The action shifts from a hospital room, presided over by a wonderfully starchy nurse, to our hero’s wartime exploits. Walker and Glover also make economical use of film flashbacks and live video, including a surreal bombing mission complete with toy aircraft flying above a blanket-like landscape.
Horsehead contains images of beauty, horror and decay underlined by a macabre sense of humour.
The sole drawback is an over-reliance on the live narration of the actor, Michael Addison. The sound effects he provides from the sidelines enhance the performance, but the accompanying text is a distracting, sometimes ponderously delivered redundancy.
Box office: 020-7930 3647. www.mimefest.co.uk or 020-7637 5661.