Laugh @ Sadler's Wells and Goudron et des Plumes @ Barbican Theatre

Antonia Baehr's Laugh at Sadler's Wells is 70 minutes of her, well, laughing. The German choreographer, director and performer asked friends to write a "score" of laughter for her birthday. She begins by treating the event like a concert, with the names of the "composers" projected for each piece, and afterwards, dressed in a man's suit with brown shoes and slicked back hair she bows with the utmost seriousness.

There's one where she traces out a triangle in the air keeping the tempo like a metronome. point-point-ha, point-ha-ha, point-ha-chortle, etc until she's fighting to keep the triangle going as she laughs, coughs and gasps for air. The control and endurance is astounding. Having done clowning and laughing exercises, I understand exactly what is necessary to control that oftentimes uncontrollable muscle - and over an hour it's certainly a feat. A clever score that I would love to use as a training exercise uses a variety of balls, the laugh matching the quality of sound of the ball as it bounces and rolls. She then uses multiple balls and expertly traces their sound with laughter.

My favorite, which most of my classmates found terrifying, is where she stand behinds a magnifying glass (see picture). What starts of humorous in itself as she appears to have a ginormous head and little body, she laughs and giggles and flutters around in a circle; the silliness gradually grows into a maniacal cackle, escalated by an echoing amplification. I was crying with laughter - I've never seen anything so silly, absurd and terrifyingly delightful.

Something charming are the "scores" from her parents. Her mother wanted to record a session of them together, wanting her daughter to explain why she was doing this. "You can't fake laughter," says her mother in German, "it's not authentic and not contagious." Baehr then immediately laughs for her mother, who in turn laughs back at her daughter. "See, definitely not contagious." Ha! Her father's score was a request that she record and compare her family's laughs and then compose them into Beethoven''s symphony (or something like that?) Equipped with a mixer she mixes the laughs of her, her parents and uncle into a rhythmic beat.

All in all, I found it an interesting experiment on laughter and I appreciate Baehr's skill and stage presence throughout the piece.


Over at the Barbican (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite venues) I saw Du Goudron et Des Plumes, part of the London International Mime Festival, which is a 75 minute brilliant acrobatic exploration set on a high flying raft brought to us with the expert and stunning skill of the French  Compagnie MPTA and choreographer Mathurin Bolze.

The five performers (four guys and a lady) begin in stillness, and then slowly emerge from and explore their raft, bouncing, jumping, swinging, climbing from it's boards and wires. The raft sways as one performer balances and jumps on a plank. Tableaux in motion flash as the rhythmic swaying raft represents the passing of time. For one humourous scene the performers recreate a reflection down below from what's happening up top. The guy upside down desperately fights gravity and ends up with water in the face (and old school clown gag). Another scene they roll down sheets of paper off the raft and create shadows and image tricks with lights. Some of it seems gratuitous, but towards the end of that scene it was riveting. They then chop down the paper in madness as the woman jumps off the raft. The men go nuts and start destroying everything in a frenzy. The woman, now on a rope dangling below, twists and turns in the air. Finally the raft tilts down and the members of the raft slip and slid and hang on for dear life. The raft eventually finds land and it's inhabitants slowly emerge from the vessel for an enthusiastic applause.

The pacing is nice, keeping the audience engaged and also allowing time for the performers to rotate seamlessly to rest. The sound is stunning and matches the action perfectly. I've never seen anything like this: a mixture of acrobatics, mime, clown, and physical theatre - the theatrics of this event are completely stunning and captivating and it all looked effortless by the immensely skilled performers.