Le Petit TraversCollectif Petit TraversLe Petit TraversQueen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room 13 January 2008 Two musicians share a dilapidated apartment: rusty lockers, dust on the floor, a roof leak that drips water continuously and loudly into a tin bowl. Like any two people sharing a living-space these flatmates, played by Nicolas Mathis and Denis Fargeton, have disputes and resolutions, and a complex ingrained relationship. The first half of the show is a long set-up — establishing a miniature social order that is then upturned when the put-upon character turns on the his oppressor: making him play fetch with polystyrene spheres then sneaking in a stone, tricking him into eating a juggling ball, tipping a metal locker to fall on him, etcetera. It’s simple, but delightful. On some of the publicity Le Petit Travers is described as a dark show, or as one containing dark humour, but I think this gives a wrong impression: the direction of enquiry isn’t into what’s secret or hidden, and the aim is not to expose or shock. The pleasure comes instead from double-act clowning — from seeing a character relationship set up and then pushed to its extreme, small actions having large consequences, just as when, in the show’s second half, the constant drip of water becomes a deluge as an exploding juggling ball blows a hole in the roof. Some of the comedic work about obsessive jugglers in Les Petit Travers is similar to material in Le Parti Pris des Choses, the Collectif’s show at the ’07 Mimefest, and the push and pull between the two characters is drawn along more or less the same lines — but no complaints here; these are virtues. Mathis and Fargeton obviously have fine dramatic instincts. They’re jugglers, but with a great line in choreographed duo work where they share or fight over balls (even further developed in Le Parti Pris des Choses, which came earlier to the Mimefest but is actually the later show), and a preference for the aesthetic pleasure of the cascade over the technical difficulty of tricks. They’re also brilliant at structure and theatrical compression and escalation. Les Petit Travers has a cumulative effect. By the end the stage is flooded, the two flatmates having failed to stop it despite drawn-out attempts to reach the high ceiling (making a two-man tower, dragging over one of the rusty lockers, jumping — all used for classic but perfectly executed clowning), and the entire set has been dragged to the centre of the stage to act as an island. Mathis and Fargeton, perched atop their worldly effects, play cello and accordion as we watch two juggling balls meander ceaselessly and rather dreamily through the water, as though powered internally. Cello and accordion play a small air, and the lights go out. It’s a joy to watch. |
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