Review: LA PENDUE: LA MANÉKINE, Barbican Centre
MimeLondon opens its annual festival with a slab of Grimm Brothers'-inspired gothic horror
Fusing together puppetry, live music and projections, MimeLondon’s opener La Manékine from La Pendue brings to vivid life one of the more gruesome of The Brothers Grimm’s tales.
A naive miller is tricked by the devil into giving away his daughter for untold riches. When the devil comes to collect, the girl defeats her would-be captor but, in order to avoid banishment to hell, her father is forced to chop off her hands. In one of the fairytale’s few plausible parts, we see the girl (bloody stumps and all) run away swiftly from her family. She ends up in the King’s palace where the devil once more tries to cause mischief but - hurrah! - there’s a happy ending in sight.
La Pendue (Estelle Charlier and Martin Kaspar Orkestar) have been to this festival before, bringing TRIA FATA (about three fates from Greek mythology) to Jacksons Lane in 2020. Whether it is seeing the miller bringing down the axe on his daughter’s hands or (as in TRIA FATA) witnessing a mother performing a caesarean on herself with an electric knife, both productions have the kind of gory graphic imagery that would give Robert Englund nightmares.
There’s a fairly neat division of labour between the pair. Charlier takes charge of an imaginative range of puppets, starting off with operating mini-figures from behind a screen and progressing onto bunraku-style storytelling and stunningly detailed masks.
When not driving the plot forward, she takes on the role of the royal gardener who, when not wielding a pesky rat on the end of a stick, speaks directly to the audience with a charming twinkle in their eyes. Orkestar is a versatile musician who operates drums, an accordion and other instruments off to one side. When not literally swapping hats, there’s a metaphorical exchange too as their roles overlap: Charlier sings a plaintive number while Orkestar abandons his post to don a crown and play the king trying to find his lost love.
Behind them both is an impressive series of monochrome projections. Many show powerful, bleak imagery that wouldn’t look out of place in an art gallery and, with the stage largely devoid of props, its this phenomenally magnetic backdrop that gives La Manékine its deeply persuasive atmosphere.
Something of a spiritual successor to The Tiger Lillies’ Olivier-winning Shockheaded Peter, this slice of rural gothic horror is powered by a sly symphony of dark cabaret and evocative narrative. At just over an hour, this show directed by Charlier and Romuald Collinet doesn’t outstay its welcome and reminds us (if reminding was needed) of the high bar MimeLondon sets for its works.
La Pendue: La Manékine continues at Barbican Centre until 18 January
MimeLondon 2025 continues until 1 February.
Photo credit: La Monde d’Aurore
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