Dance
The Mozart experience
Deirdre McMahon
As is clear from the programme for this year's festival, the world of mime has many mansions. There are magicians, acrobats and musicians as well as what might be considered conventional mime artists such as David Glass, Nola Rae and Trestle. Next month Theatre de Complici- te appears at the Lyttelton with their production of Diirrenmatt's The Visit, part of which they performed at last year's festival. To judge from the large and enthusiastic audiences, mime and visual theatre is enormously popular, a fact which some sociologists claim reflects unease with the written and spoken word. Happi- ly, none of these heavyweight speculations intruded into the festival events.
The Barcelona company El Tricicle opened the festival with Slastic, a humor- ous look at the world of sport and sporting endeavour. The subject is an apposite one for El Tricicle since Barcelona hosts the 1992 Olympics. Slastic is the imaginary trademark for a sportswear firm, and the name is remorselessly repeated throughout the show in mind-numbing advertising jingles, on T-shirt logos, trainers, head- bands and flags. Endeavour is the key word because most of the humour comes from the way El Tricicle has observed the grim earnestness and total self- preoccupation of sports professionals. There is the gymnast skipping furiously, the tennis player bouncing from foot to foot waiting to receive the ball (and miss- ing it), the athletes waiting for ever on starter's orders and the canoeists plunging their way through what seem to be 40-foot waves. All these vignettes are performed with a wonderful eye for detail, but the best numbers are the rather surreal boxing match with three boxers in the ring, each taking turns to punch each other, and the skiers, teetering precariously on their skis.
El Tricicle is superior physical comedy. There could be no greater contrast with it than 'Theatre de l'Unite's Mozart au Cho- colat. This French group was founded by Jacques Livchine in 1968 and is noted for its bizarre 'events', such as a public guillo- tining in the Place de la Bastille and performing in a Citroen 2CV. Livchine believes in audience participation with a vengeance, so it was with some foreboding that I arrived for the performance. But Livchine doesn't pounce on his audience in the way Dame Edna does, although when we entered the ICA theatre we were given Dame Edna-style badges with the names of people from Mozart's era. We were also given scratchy white wigs to wear, and were then invited into a makeshift 18th- century salon where we sat on gilt chairs and sipped chocolate and schnapps while Livchine and his performers enacted var- ious scenes from Mozart's life, with the help of the audience.
It is an old trick but Livchine does it beautifully and he chooses his characters with an unerring eye. He fastened on an impeccable city gent and handed him the Casanova badge. As the entertainment proceeded 'Casanova' threw himself into his role with great aplomb, as did the other members of the audience, notably the jeans-clad Dr Mesmer. Livchine bestowed a smacking kiss on the Empress Maria Theresa (`Sixteen children!' he kept re- peating), while Marie Antoinette displayed an appropriate let them eat cake' attitude.
Livchine himself played a rampaging Schickaneder, with Melanie Jackson as a pouting Nancy Storace and Hervee De Lafond as Rosa Cannabich, but the out- standing performance was that of Francis Vidil as Mozart. Small and pixie-like, Vidil has a marvellous face, still and serene one minute and wickedly mischievous the next. He is also a distinguished concert pianist and his consummate musicianship is the reason why his portrait of Mozart, despite the slightness of Livchine's entertainment, is more convincing than that of any of the actors who have performed in Shaffer's play. Vidil pulled off some wonderful party tricks which Mozart used to do: playing the piano through a cloth, playing with one hand tied behind his back, with a blindfold and finally, somewhat anachronistically, banging out Beethoven's Ninth with his nose. Vidil also plays the violin and the trumpet creditably, and he accompanied the singers in some Mozart arias as well. His performance must be one of the highlights of the festival.
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