I’ve come across the works of Told By An Idiot Theatre before. They are to be admired for their experimentation and playfulness with what theatre can be and is. Told By An Idiot thrive off unpredictability, collaboration, physical comedy, and breaking the rules. Within the creativity of their live events, the line between performer, artist, participant, and audience is fuzzy. What they stand for and what they do in terms of making theatre accessible is fantastic. The production was supported by Theatre Royal Plymouth, Royal And Derngate Northampton, and Unity Theatre Liverpool.
Tonight they performed, “The Strange Tale of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel”. Stan Laurel was part of the iconic comedy duo, Laurel and Hardy who rose to worldwide fame in the epoch of early classical Hollywood American cinema. Meanwhile, Charlie Chaplin lived through an extraordinary “rags to riches” story to become an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer. Notable for his work on projects during the silent film era. The performance was not based on a factual account of their lives. Told By An Idiot are quoted to have always been fascinated by the deconstruction of famous figures and the notion of creating a “true fantasy” – an interesting oxymoron. The performance explored a darker chapter of comedy history but they placed an emphasis on fictional storytelling and improvisation; most of it was fantasy and imaginary but elements of the truth were contained in the narrative. The Media has always been a powerful platform for storytelling in show business: constructing the personalities and stories of famous celebrities with the words they write. This performance was a reminder of that - well for me anyway.
However, while the thinking and planning might have been there, the final production and product, in my opinion, wasn’t a success. The fragmented comedy sketches based on fictional life events felt like a stylistic re-creation of what had been done in the past. You could anticipate the visual jokes which were going to take place. In effect, there was nothing innovative happening in that sense. As the story was in a random order with no talking it was hard to follow to be honest. I was expecting the “silent film” subtitle slides to occur a lot more regularly – projected onto the multi-level ship set. The physical comedy was performed at a steady pace for the most part, lacking in punch and dynamism. Combine the previous with rather repetitive piano music, the whole production felt underwhelming and uninteresting. Also, I didn’t really understand the repetition of certain scenes, for example why did one scene rewind back to what we just saw “five minutes and thirty three seconds earlier”?
The only times where it felt moderately engaging was in the moments of audience participation. It was good that they let an audience member, who had the ability to play piano, perform a melody while the ensemble improvised. Another member of the audience danced with Charlie Chaplin who led the spontaneous choreography. I’m surprised there wasn’t more opportunities really to become active participants. As well, it didn’t seem necessary for the actors to exit through the auditorium. All things considered: I like the theatre company for their aims and objectives, the performance had quite a curious premise, but the final product didn’t grab your attention.
Reviewer - Sam Lowe
on - 4/2/20
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