The Wedding, the latest production from Ipswich-based theatre troupe Gecko, grapples with the social contracts of modern life – our marriage, as it were, to our jobs, to the state, to the company we keep. The show, performed last week as part of the much-lauded London international mime festival, was created in 2017 by Gecko’s artistic director Amit Lahav, who joins Jasmin Vardimon and Hofesh Shechter in a growing cohort of prominent Israeli-born, UK-based choreographers. Harnessing sprightly dance and visceral physical theatre, Lahav conjures a world humming with the comforts and disappointments of union, where predictability is an unfortunate reality and anger operates on the same continuum as love.
Confetti, tulle and a twisting playground slide support the nine-member cast as they traverse a patchwork quilt of vignettes, some surreal, others disturbingly familiar. Rich couples fight; poor families beg; corporate recruits don white gowns and enthusiastically “wed” their new careers, only to discover the soul-crushing paralysis of being overworked, underappreciated and unable to escape.
These narratives are rambling and fractured – sometimes frustratingly so – though the performers coax some vivid characters from the chaos, including a fast-talking busker who lives out of a suitcase and a disaffected woman hellbent on fleeing her corporate bondage.
Exuberant leaps and lunges abound, but are for ever at risk of being hijacked by a disquiet that roils beneath the surface. It’s here that the matrimonial conceit roars loudest – is there a social institution more fraught with the fear of dashed expectations than marriage?
Gecko’s habit of incorporating multiple languages into its work generates a riot of miscommunication in The Wedding, with occasional lines of speech jabbered in contrasting tongues. Cue body language to the rescue: fury simmers in clenched fists and caved stomachs, while joy explodes in the stomps and claps of the group’s rousing finale. This physical intensity carries the production during the moments when its sprawling stories fail to unlock.
Also showing as part of the mime festival is Father (Vader), from Franck Chartier and Gabriela Carrizo, the duo behind the Olivier award-winning Belgian company Peeping Tom. This 2014 work, part of a trilogy of family dramas that also includes 2016’s Moeder (Mother), sees the memories and dreams of an old man coalesce into a free-wheeling reverie. Is he an ageing patriarch rehashing his past? Or a madman trapped in a hallucinatory undertow?
A pastel set plops us in the bowels of a care home populated by elderly residents and their daffy attendants, a ragtag crew at the intersection of wretched and hilarious. Hun-Mok Jung sets zany, quickfire vocals alight, while Chartier and Carrizo’s choreography – polished during stints with dance companies like Nederlands Dans Theater and Les Ballets C de la B – is expressed vibrantly by Yi-Chun Liu, particularly in her supple backbends. Elsewhere there’s singing, miming and clowning, plus superb visual gags and socket-popping contortions. These elements align brilliantly in a solo by Leo De Beul, who croons about his “feelings of fluff” to a flock of swooning female fans.
Father is hugely funny, while also showing compassion for our human inadequacies. Some of its imagery feels foggy, but the imagination is consistently lucid.
Star ratings (out of 5)
The Wedding ★★★
Father (Vader) ★★★★
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