Small world with a big imagination

If you’re looking for stories told using cardboard houses, cameras, miniature cars and sound effects, then look no further. Hotel Modern are the right people for the job. Starting with their impressive The Great War this trio of theatre makers has developed a unique dramatic form in which scale models, objects, cameras combine with huge imagination to evoke a small world. And they’ve done it once again in their latest production God’s Beard.

In the first scene actress Pauline Kalker introduces the play as a mixed bouquet, or a box of chocolates with a variety of flavours, or a bus full of passengers, each with their own origin and their own destination, but all of them brought together for this moment.

And this is precisely the way in which the stories making up God’s Beard have been brought together. The two most important stories concern Kalker’s father and Arlène Hoornweg’s parents. In the first story we hear a recording of the father in which he talks about the war years and going underground to escape arrest. He sounds old and asthmatic and he breaks down when it comes to discussing the death of his own father. The three actors (Kalker, Hoornweg and Herman Helle) and musician Arthur Sauer bring to life the events he recalls by animating puppets live on stage.
The second story starts off with a short stop-motion film that shows an animated version of Hoornweg clearing up her mother’s house following her death. This leads into a series of flashbacks animated live in scale-model sets, taking us to a childhood playing on the living room floor, lying in bed listening to her mother playing the piano, and finding out about the early death of her father.

It remains fascinating to watch the three actors as they bustle about onstage, manipulating cameras, dollhouse-sized objects, tiny lamps, cardboard apartment blocks and miniature people – with the images they are filming being simultaneously projected on a large screen. Onstage we see Herman Helle holding a toy car as Kalker and Hoornweg hurriedly shift flat boards of background scenery featuring images of houses. On the screen, however, you see a car driving along a road. Despite seeing how the illusion is created you fall for it, and you are drawn into an imagined world.

There is no doubting the craftsmanship involved in this unique approach to theatre, which Hotel Modern have taken to theatres all over the world. And God’s Beard is once again replete with striking images, amusing observations and affecting moments. But still there’s something not quite right, because all of these striking images, amusing observations and affecting moments never amount to more than the sum of their parts. Although the play does ultimately work, it doesn’t all linger long in the mind.

20-12-2012