by Angela Corrias
photo by Marcia Petterson
If you think that a box is just a box, you are bound to change your mind. At least after seeing the play First Class, the debut production of Half-Wit Theatre, founded by Amy Nostbakken and Nir Paldi, on stage at the Blue Elephant Theatre until the 25th of October. It all begins with a parcel that Micheal Bates (Nir Paldi) needs to send off. All he wants is to send his box, he’s not asking for anything else. And yet, he will meet Bea (Amy Nostbakken), the most enthusiastic postal officer ever, so enthusiastic that I thought I was witnessing a Royal Mail fancy advertisement.
But soon I learnt that Bea’s passion was not the mere postal brochure but life as a whole and she had the rare capability to drag into her euphoric excitement even people like Micheal who, let’s face it, is not exactly what we can call the embodiment of exuberance.
And here their and our journey starts. Bea and Michael, with the only scenographic help of a table, a bottle of red wine and a corkscrew, bring us to Paris and make us experience the romance of the Seine, the history that lies at the Père Lachaise, the charm of the forbidden that only Paris is entitled to boast. With the only tool of their bodies, the actors transport an astonished public into French life for an hour, leading them to picture the Moulin Rouge premises around the couple performing a sensual dance on jazz notes, or to imagine a smoky café with Edit Piaf singing “La Vie en Rose.”
photo by Marcia Petterson
After the show I managed to grab Nir who, chattering away wittingly, explained to me what he means for physical theatre: “You know, it all depends on the actors, if we are not good, the public won’t understand anything. As you can see, we only have a table on stage, and we have created different environments in the public’s imagination with only our performances. We were in the post office, then suddenly on a boat; we were watching the Tour Eiffel, then suddenly on the top spying on people in the street. It’s all about physical experience that goes beyond the boundaries of a post office.” Both Amy and Nir were trained at the prestigious École International de Théatre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and apparently they still got the city under their skin. Amy is a Canadian all-out performer and wonderfully entertains with her acting, singing and dancing, pushing the public beyond the boundaries of reality and taking them to a fancy journey to a city famous for its tradition of romantic, offbeat, unconventional love.
The Blue Elephant Theatre is a semi-hidden (admittedly by no means run-of-the-mill) venue, and you can only recognise it by the small sign of a blue elephant, indeed. But when I told the Programme Manager, Jasmine Cullingford, that although I didn’t have a hard time in finding them, I would have expected a more “theatre-looking” location instead of an ordinary block of flats, her prompt response left no space for further objection: “Well, this is where people live, isn’t it?” This is the spirit of the Blue Elephant, at least for the last two years. In fact, if at the beginning it was more internationally focused, now, under it seeks to involve the local community through plays, exhibitions and children activities. The performers, directors and companies engaged are mainly London-based and Jasmine is hoping to work always more often with South London artists.
The community is involved also through children activities run directly in the local schools, with projects focused in providing groups of the society that don’t have easy access to the arts, targeting young people from refugee, asylum and migrant communities, as well as children in care.
The Blue Elephant programme covers a great variety of art-forms, from dance, comedy, music and visual art, performing new writing and classics, both scripted and devised.
For more information on what’s on at the Blue Elephant check out their website http://www.blueelephanttheatre.co.uk/
