Peeping Tom: Mother (Moeder), London International Mime Festival 2018 (London Barbican)

[zxDaveM]

Foteini Christofilopoulou was at the rehearsal of Peeping Tom: Mother (Moeder), London International Mime Festival 2018
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Marie Gyselbrecht
© Foteini Christofilopoulou. 
Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr

Yi-Chun Liu, Brandon Lagaert, Maria Carolina Vieira
© Foteini Christofilopoulou. 
Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr

 

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Set from DanceTabs: Peeping Tom: Mother (Moeder), LIMF 2018
Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr

[Coated]

I accidentally saw a Peeping Tom show a while ago and was entranced , so I booked Moeder when I noticed it being on at the Barbican.

 

Moeder felt like delving into a surreal reality where everything is oddly on edge, clinical but intense at the same time. Bits of it were heartbreaking,  short interludes of humour dissolved into loss, tragedy became quietly amusing - I find it quite difficult to describe, but would definitely recommend it to anyone who is not opposed to surrealism and creepy nurses with very long arms. The piece is about Mothers and covers a spectrum of human relationships - expecting parents, unexplainable tragedies, family bonds, old men mourning their long dead mother.

 

In one scene a woman is essentially making out with a coffee machine (first image in the post above) which then dies, and somehow the death of the coffee machine, its attempted resuscitation and the aftermath turn from a bit of silliness into a powerful study of grief. 

 

The physical theatre / dance element were sparse but pretty impressive, oddly disjointed movements, people falling and trying to get back onto their feet, a performer running up the walls, raging over the stage kicking furniture. (I did spend some time wondering about their average injury rate, there were no holds barred in the way some of the performers threw themselves across, or on, the stage).

There were bits that made me think of Crystal Pite's Betroffenheit or Kathy Marston's Witch-hunt in terms of telling a story (not choreo), some elements of repetition and oddness were perhaps reminiscent of Pina Bausch pieces, but all together this was really its own piece of theatre with a very distinct and interesting language.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2018 by Coated