Review: Rust, Pleasance Theatre

Written for Culture Wars

A silhouetted pipeline projectile vomits waste into the sea. Ships and submarines are coated in a layer of their own decay and a two-headed mutant fish with savage predatory gnashers leaps ungraciously through waves an air. Rust often looks like it has environmental concerns at its heart.

In actual fact, global effluence is merely the aesthetic background for a fairly traditional tale of personal epiphany and free-thinking individual versus corporate machine.

The only pollution given real attention is that of the airwaves, as Brummie cannery-worker Spike is snatched from the factory line and whisked aboard the submarine home of pirate radio station, Mutant FM. Here, spinning vinyl with the conjoined Limpet Brothers or cooking up a storm with Linseed – a one armed hybrid of unspecific gender – Spike stumbles into a battle for the minds of the drone-like workers. In the liberal corner, the undersea punk of Mutant FM, while, in the fascist-capitalist corner, the Orwellian brainwashing of the Revered Jellichoe.

We’ve been here before, of course, the little tribe antagonising and eventually overcoming the dominant malign forces that turn out to have more commonalities than first glances suggest. Add a tacked on love story between well-knit social misfits and an unexpected death right on cue and it all begins to fall into the instinctively familiar pattern of the blockbuster. Essentially, it’s a puppetry mash-up of The Mutant Chronicles and The Boat that Rocked with a dash of the socio-political setting of The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.

However, Green Ginger succeeds in diverting attention with a lusciously dark, cartoon aesthetic. Their puppets are gorgeous, lumpy creatures carrying more than a hint of Viz magazine’s crudeness – both in appearance and behaviour. A stubborn turd, for example, eventually gives in to repeated flushing and finds itself free to weave fish-like beneath the waves.

The charm of the aesthetic and manipulation, however, cannot make up for Rust’s narrative deficiencies. Its humour often feels clunky, caught somewhere between an audience of children and puerile adults, and there is a desperate need for pace. Though their manipulation is superb, the three puppeteers have too much to do between them. Rather than a slick, well-oiled machine, Rust feels like a skulking hulk weighed down at the bottom of the sea. It’s no shipwreck, but it’s a far cry from unsinkable.

On another note, I found out yesterday that Culture Wars has been named one of the top 25 online resources for arts and culture in the UK by Creative Tourist. So that's nice.