Reviewed Wednesday 12th March 2014
Take a few scraps of leather, sew them together and stuff them to create a 50cm tall human shape and you have a faceless leather doll. Hand it to three of the six operators from Flabbergast Theatre and that doll comes to life. Create another one for the other three puppeteers, and you have disreputable duo, Boris and Sergey.
Boris & Sergey's Vaudevillian Adventure is a blend of a number of things. It has elements of vaudeville, cabaret, comedy, Japanese Banraku puppetry, a road trip of sorts, and more. Be prepared, though, as this is most definitely adults only entertainment and even the Balkan accents of these two do not hide the bad language. These puppets are nothing like those on children's television programmes.
This production will stay with you for a long time after, indelibly etched onto your memory. You will never be able to listen to Kate Bush's
Wuthering Heights again without a vision of Boris in a white dress dancing to the music, and the thought of a game of poker will strike terror into the hearts of those of weak constitution.
The strength of this performance is in the abilities of the puppeteers to successfully get the audience to believe in these puppets by giving them distinct and well filled out characters through the spoken word and, even more so, the body language with which they invest these puppets.
Unlike Banraku, where the focus is all on the puppets, these puppeteers are a very visible and integral part of the performance, as much involved as the puppets. It almost seems as though the puppets are moving the puppeteers as they twist around one another in a complicated weaving dance.
This show was a huge hit in Edinburgh, and it is easy to see why. This is a highly energetic show, with never a second wasted, that will keep you laughing from start to finish as these two "Balkan bad boys" get up to all sorts of antics. Go along, and have a great laugh.
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