Mundo Paralelo
No Fit State has teamed up with Serbian director Mladen Materic, his Toulouse-based Tattoo Theatre and a troupe of 11 international performers to reinvent circus for a brick-walled environ, deconstructing their usual practise and making it work within a new context. The result is exciting physical theatre on the small stage.
Gareth Jones in Mundo Paralelo at the Torch, Milford Haven
Mundo Paralelo translates as parallel world, and in National Theatre Wales’ 12th production we see a performance trying to bring the best of both circus and theatre together in a Picasso-blue-hued show. Reined into a smaller, more static space NFS has still managed to keep their trademark changeable promenade feel through the use of curtains, platforms, and choreographed set changes.
Themes of drunkenness, separation, despair and suicide litter the show. Parallel worlds become playful, micro worlds of dreams, hopes and memories. Acrobatic performers move from dollhouse streets to life-size rooftop platforms and we are treated to glimpses of these alternate realities - window-gazing glimpses of interweaving stories and surreal triptych vignettes of deja vu and clowning. The show embraces mean feats of gravity defiance, most notably in Natalie Fandino’s suicidal trapeze act and the unerring acrobatic juggling of Frida Odden Brinkman. Swooping aerial moves become all the more daring indoors - Adie Delaney’s childlike-brave swinging trapeze act literally skims the local theatre’s ceiling and floor. The adult audience gasps, enraptured, for this is grown up yet ever playful circus set to an inventive vaudeville music hall meets Gogol Bordello mad house soundtrack.
In shrinking circus’ physical space, Mundo Paralelo does at times feel uneven - the spotlight focus of the stage less forgiving than that of the big top - yet, with time, such experimentation can only expand their performance vocabulary for the better and tighten up any slack wires, ready to tour the show.
Production information
- Management:
- National Theatre Wales and Nofit Circus, in partnership with The Torch Theatre, Milford Haven
- Cast:
- Frida Odden Brinkmann, Adie Delaney, Natalia Fandino, Vanina Fandino, Emiliano Ferri, Marco Fiera, George Fuller, Gareth Jones, Kevin McIntosh, Miguel Munoz, Anna Sandreuter, Peter Swaffer-Reynolds,
Production information can change over the run of the show.
Run sheet
- Torch Milford Haven
- March 3-19 2011
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