Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Ghost Light: Between Fall and Flight
Underbelly and Machine de Cirque
Genre: Circus
Venue: Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Two skilful acrobats emerge from the shadows in the dusk, don their garb and entertain each other through tinkering with a teeterboard (see saw), using it to add to their arguments and reconcile. This is a piece of physical genius in how to use your body to communicate. The narrative, playful at times and argumentative on occasions shows a connection beyond the spoken word that is enthralling.
Review
Maxim Laurin and Guillaume Larouche are two characters in the tradition of the Tramp and Keaton and all of the greats who used silence to such incredible effect. We begin with half-light, a single light on stage with shadows appearing behind a huge canvass. Blank and virginal white, the canvass reveals our two protagonists who hint at their existence before they appear, through shadow. A succession of coats then also take their entrance to entrance us through them being used to adopt the hint of a persona. The hint however is enough to both inhabit the space and keep us attentive, as they use the teeterboard to pounce, flip, roll and fly. And boy do they fly.
It is a physical feat which puts us in awe of their abilities, not just to parade an array of jumps and twists, turns and tumbles but how they create a narrative through such a simple piece of apparatus. There is literally no hiding place. This is more than their stage, it is their being, their spirit and themselves. By becoming people other than themselves, donning disguises with costumes that have been handed to them in the darkness, they expose their relationship. It is that which is the most entrancing aspect of this. We glimpse into how they work because they showed us at what they work.
It is enthralling, the physical feats aside, as their interaction is well measured and between the tiredness of one and the physical metaphor of the shoes from both there are aspects of that togetherness amplified by occasional distance which is really worthwhile watching. The skills on show for anyone without that physical dexterity can be awe inducing insofar as they do things we cannot contemplate, but there is so much more at play here. The creative space with the nod to a theatre laid bare, with the audience gone and the opportunity in their hands, feet and creative beings is beautiful, again in the simplicity of being theatrical with the inspiration of it being just about two spirits, freed to behave as they wish.
There is for Machine de Cirque a wide array of creatives who advise and direct, choreograph and compose and what truly seems to transcend beyond the ring is that collective. There is a feeling that we have two representatives physically discussing things on our behalf, in front of us but with whispers rather than shouts. Such is their physical presence that I felt quite moved by them although it was a piece of little emotion it was an emotional watch. Of such contradictions are made drama and this may have had a simple centrepiece, but it arrived at such complex effects, until it falls, te effect somewhere in the distance between us, in the shadows and the darkness comes to take us away but if you close your eyes you can still see the possibilities of flight, not falling.
