Invisible Bonfires

Published Wednesday 3 October 2007 at 12:45 by Jeremy Brien

David Cameron and Zac Goldsmith may have hitched their political bandwagon to climate change but it takes Forkbeard Fantasy, one of the longest running touring companies in the UK, to spot its theatrical possibilities. Most of them, of course, involve exploring conventional wisdom with Forkbeard’s familiar eclectic mix of interactive film, puppetry, physical theatre and many other varied forms of visual counterfeiting.

As always, some are extremely clever and some too off-beam to register. What is slightly disappointing is that while FF founding brothers Chris and Tim Britton’s inventive roadshow approach provides a lunatic view of many of the dangers of global warming, they come up with very few answers. Perhaps this isn’t the role of surreal satire. It is no accident, though, that the two best sections are a reprieve of their Rough Magyck contribution to the RSC’s Complete Works season at Stratford-upon-Avon in 2006, in which they date the rape of nature from Prospero’s destruction of his Book of Knowledge at the end of The Tempest, and the later lament of Pan, the God of Nature, over the destruction of his kingdom.

Another bonus is FF’s amazing display of technical wizardry, ranging from a hamster-drive teasmade to a stunning larger-than-life puppet horse, while the four musicians making up The Lotus Pedals, of Homelife fame, contribute both to the pace and the impact of a show that generates rather more heat than light.