Theatre / Reviews
Review: Mayfest: Nautilus
Nautilus is a comedy sketch show performed by Trygve Wakenshaw. Its distinguishing feature lies in the fact that Wakenshaw is a mime artist, and the entire 75 minutes are (almost entirely) wordless.
Wary audiences might fear that this means spending over an hour watching a white-faced loon pretending to be trapped in a glass box and struggling with an invisible umbrella. But the performance actually owes a great deal more to Looney Tunes than to Marcel Marceau.
Wakenshaw has a particular penchant for using his flexible and distorting body to present animals: from lambs and chickens to caterpillars and stand-up comedians. And these caricature anthropomorphised creatures are presented using the conventions of Saturday afternoon cartoons – big beating hearts, detachable limbs, cars that zoom past with a ‘woosh’ sound, birds that unzip their skins to reveal that they’re cats underneath.
The sketches are all self-contained little pieces with a nicely defined punchline followed by a lighting change. But as the show progresses, the sketches become increasingly interwoven, cross-referencing one another as Wakenshaw piles up the visual imagery. The sleeping dinosaur from one sketch wakes up on the aeroplane in another, and once he’s had his moment of comedy the cross-bound Jesus in the corner briefly acknowledges whenever his name is taken in vain.
Wakenshaw undeniably has remarkable mining skills – his cartoon-like creations are almost always instantly recognisable with just a few simple movements of the body. He manages to singlehandedly populate the stage with multiple characters, and cleverly presents the seemingly unstageable (like the path of a fired bullet).
But the true strength of his show lies in the comic ingenuity which means that there are no yawns, no moments when we’re supposed to just sit back and admire how clever it all is. Excellent technique is used entirely in the service of non-stop top grade comedy. And where else would you get to find out what happened to the chicken after it crossed the road, or what a dinosaur’s bedtime routine looks like?
Nautilus was performed at the Wardrobe Theatre on Saturday, May 21 and Sunday, May 22. For more info, visit www.mayfestbristol.co.uk/mayfest2016/nautilus
Pic: Fraser Cameron
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