Written for Culture WarsAt last year's festival, Le Navet Bete picked up a Total Theatre nomination for Serendipity. Zemblanity, another hour of madcap and explosive buffoonery, proves their success was anything but the result of happy coincidence.
From raw materials of leggings and lycra, make-up and muscular contortions is made a chorus creatures filled to bursting with potential energy. Each twitches with an ingrained animal anticipation, stilly salivating before they explode into the headless frenzy of sperm in a petri-dish. Tumbling around the stage, they seem forged from tightly-coiled springs and slinkies.
Together, they are are tight-knit and well-balanced unit. Where one is an effete and airy presence, another is an open-mouthed, fiery force; one, a louche, creeping reptile; another, an armour-plated beetle with a big appetite. Yet, in spite of such differing modes, the foursome plays with the utmost of complicity and total, unwavering commitment.
In their midst is the hapless Hans, the bowler-hatted butt of the mischief. In the hands of Nick Bunt, however, Hans is no mere lynchpin. With each remonstration of our laughter, Bunt cranks up the comedy, punishing diaphragms like an ever-tightening corset. His combination of po-faced naivety, futile authoritarianism and warped German accent - think Dutch vowels and clipped South African consonants - is deadly.
At times, however, the manic energy veers too close to onslaught and Zemblanity could use more clarity and structure. The piece retains something of the rehearsal room: anything goes but, at the same time, everything goes, resulting in a patchwork quilt stitched arbitrarily together. Though this rhythm grants them an anarchic unpredictably, allowing musical numbers and non-sequitors to spring from nowhere, it can daze and confuse.
As it is, Zemblanity is utterly infectious, but if they can harness future material while keeping the chaos, Le Navet Bete stand set to be the very best of bonkers.
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