The newest company from the renowned Jacques Lecoq school are back for their second year to bring us a delightfully simple and wonderfully sensitive exploration of what is lost and found in translation.
A delayed train leaves an English boy and Italian girl stranded at the empty platform of a train station. With the whole night ahead of them and without a shared language they are forced to explore different forms of communication. Soon they discover the myriad methods of interaction that may be reached without words.
Valentina Ceschi and Thomas Eccleshare play with the gaps of understanding with a grace and innovation that is at once funny and touching. Two suitcases, for the most part, provide all the set and props for the story and both members are as adept with their comic timing as they are with their movement. Eccleshares use of Loud-English, the communication of choice for mono-lingual Brits, is tirelessly amusing. The opening exhibits such a command over the tiniest of physical movements, you begin to forget what you are looking at (without giving anything away). Make no mistake however - this is not explosive; there are no back flips with pyrotechnics and funky house beats. Here the merit is in its minimalism. If you are looking for something that will stay with you rather than knock your senses about, if you seek out the French café rather than the Starbucks, then this is for you. From walking plugs and sockets that come to the sad realisation that they're incompatible to words that turn into butterflies, this production creates wonder out of the simplest of things. It is witty, sweet and cunningly choreographed.