THEATRE:Suzy Bell
HE whacks unsuspecting kiddies on the head with a plastic baseball bat, offers them half-eaten rotten apples as if they were champagne truffles, and munches on sticky green spaghetti worms found in old tins of dog food. “Yech!” Screech the kids, but of course they love it. They love anything gross, obscene and blissfully bizarre.
Especially when it’s done with magic and a poetic intensity as compelling as that of Durban’s grotesquely comic mime artist, Aldo Brincat and his The Grossest Show on Earth!
With his blue-shaded panda eyes he appears like The Addams Family’s Fester – a shambling figure wearing that slept-in look – black tramp’s coat, unkempt grey Barbara Bush wig (hiding his trademark bald pate) and canary yellow rubber gloves and white face.
Competing for creative distraction on a naked stage is a lonesome cardboard box. A red danger sticker on the side entices Mister El Grosso to discover what lurks inside. Aah! It’s a hand. Very Addamsesque, very absurd, but it’s a very much alive hand that shoots a fine finger up Brincat’s nostrils and gladly grabs his bum.
It sounds silly but it’s not, because Brincat moves slowly and very carefully through each comic moment. Watching him is like watching an old silent art movie. It’s pure mime, so Brincat doesn’t really talk, but somehow his gobbledygook is far more appealing than words.
This show was a sell out in Namibia, “watched mainly by adults. But it was not the blue version”, insists Brincat, while his make-up melts down his cheeks after a sweaty 45-minute show. “I’m trying to elevate children’s theatre. Children are sick of seeing adults dressed up as pussy cats. Children are actually very discerning.”
Brincat borders on brilliance – he’s slick, he’s magical and he’s an actor with an absurdist imagination that would make even absurdist Eugene Ionesco proud.
The Grossest show on Earth! is on at The Open Air Theatre at the University of Natal NatalNovember 30 on Saturdays from 2.30pm