Of the three Russian physical theatre companies showcased by the London International Mime Festival — Derevo and Akhe are the other two — it is BlackSkyWhite that works within the narrowest range. We got a first glimpse of what Dimitry Aryupin and Marcella Soltan can do a decade ago. Bertrand’s Toys was a ferocious surprise, a small, pitch-black gift of a show bursting with malicious glee. A few years ago they returned with Astronomy for Insects — a bludgeoning, bombastic piece BlackSkyWhite is back with USSR Was Here. Aryupin’s hour-long two-hander purports to be an oblique lament for the millions of Russians who died in the two world wars, succumbed to Stalin or subsequently migrated. This is history as a grim catch-all for a nightmarish double act. Soltan and Egor Moiseev embody a kind of vaudevillian horror show with vague political underpinnings.
He’s bald, stocky and tends to grimace. She’s thin, impassive and wears a black skullcap. Both are in grey suit coats and loose, silky white pyjama trousers. Emerging from or exiting either side of a wedge of black curtains, they jerk and skitter about like demented wind-up toys or puppets locked in a series of funny-peculiar mechanical motions. Some of the work’s fleeting, antic episodes exude a macabre wit, as when Soltan tries prying her own lolling head away from the hairless, artificial head poking up out of her jacket. She’s scarily adroit at sustaining the illusion that she is a two-headed being.
With its constant, deafening soundtrack and garish coloured lights materialising through smoky darkness, Aryupin’s high-impact chamber theatre of dreams is artfully conjured. The downside of its repetitive structure is the tedium that sets in once you realise that all you’re going to get from his mix of Antonin Artaud’s theories, Slavic-style butoh and subconscious echoes of Petrushka is splinters and shards.
Box office: 020-7930 3647, to Jan 20