Intronauts - by Green Ginger. Jacksons Lane Theatre, London & on tour. 4**** William Russell
London.
INTRONAUTS
By Green Ginger
Created in co-production with Nordland Visual Theatre
4****
Jacksons Lane theatre, 269 Archway Road, London to 13 January 2019 and on tour.
Tour dates 29 Jan – 2 Feb, Theatre Royal, Plymouth; 5 feb, the Traverse, Edinburgh; 20-22 Feb Warwick Arts Centre; 27-28 February Phoenix, Exeter; 2 March West End Centre, Aldershot; 14 March, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal; 15 March – The Civic, Barnsley; 20-31 March, Tobacco Factory, Bristol.
Runs 1 hr No interval.
TICKETS & INFORMATION :www.greenginger.net
@ReviewsGate
@pursuivant
Review: William Russell 13 January
A journey into inner space
This is an enchanting and completely baffling tale inspired by the film Fantastic Voyage in which a team of scientists were miniaturised and injected in a miniaturised submarine into the body of a Russian defector to remove a blood clot in his brain. That film, and Numskulls, tiny technicians who loved inside a man’s head and were each responsible for a sensory facility, which featured in a children’s magazine called The Beezer, were the inspirations for this hour of puppetry and magical animation involving a magnificent machine and three performers – Emma Keaveny-Roys, Adam Fuller and Chris Pine.
We meet the man, see a projection of his body on a screen, and he tells the machine’s operator where he has an itch and that it might need cleaning, which, using extended arms outside the machine – we see it human size – duly takes place. After that the journey from the scrotum to the bile duct, the liver and the spleen duly takes place, ending up – after a great deal of resistance from the operator of the machine who insists they are not allowed to go there – in the brain, a vast golden brown glove which seems to consist of lots of filing cabinet drawers from one of which something squawking loudly is ejected.
We are in the future and this is how operations are conducted, although what is wrong with the patienmt – apart from that itching anus – is never really very clear. It looks magnificent, the performers are skilled, the projections immaculate, and the whole thing out of this world, except the world is inside somebody in this world, or this world in the future. It is described as dystopian by Green Ginger so presumably it is.
Devising performers: Emma Keaveney-Roys, Adam Fuller & Chris Pine.
Director: Emma Williams.
Composer: Simon Preston.
Set & Costume Design: Chris Pine.
Lighting Design: Marianne Thallaud Wedset.
Animations: Emma Windsor.
Costume Fabrication: Izzy Bristow, Emma Keaveney-Roys.
Fabrication: Emma Powell, Nick Willsher, Kyle Hirani, jasper Cousins, Vigidia Ludvigsen.
