REVIEW: Mimetic Festival 2014, Old Vic Vaults ✭✭✭✭

Mimetic Festival 2014 18 – 29 November

Let's face it - the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is really one of a kind. It's a breeding ground for creative ingenuity, an outlet for creative stupidity, a boisterous, demanding and exacting timetable of a smorgasbord of theatrical, comic and musical treats. It covers all genres and appeals, or tries to appeal, to all ages, tastes and types. It bubbles over with excitement, alcohol, recreational activities and the excess that comes with unrestrained leisure. It can be addictive in its own way, as audiences feel compelled to rush between venues to cram in as much as possible, to experience the full range of activities on offer.

It can sometimes be like the theatrical equivalent of a crammed tube following a huge celebration: all sweat, tears, happiness and good memories, sardined together and festooned with the scent of vomit, the sharp odour of urine or the stale breeze of whiskey breath.

Despite many successful festivals of its own, London has never really produced a festival to come close to the sort of response the Edinburgh Fringe Festival evokes. The 2014 Mimetic Festival, from Finger In The Pie, held at the Old Vic Vaults in November, comes the closest to successfully evoking the free-wheeling spirit and ribald imagination of Edinburgh.

There is a dank, dark edge to the venue which immediately provokes a sense of the unexpected. The front of house staff are genial and eclectic, unafraid of conversation and enthusiastic about the many offerings the Festival provides. There are several performance spaces, all chilled with the depth of the surrounding Earth but adaptable for many experiences. Seating is rudimentary but comfortable, more comfortable than is often the case in Edinburgh.

The breadth of programmed material was impressive: genuinely a case of something for everyone, from light, risqué cabaret, through puppetry and physical theatre, to dark, deep explorations of key issues about humanity. My only slight quibble is that in a festival with only one venue and many performing spaces, shows really need to be scheduled on a timetable that permits patrons to flit from one show to another without leaving one show early to avoid missing the start of the next.

Like all worthwhile festivals, the Mimetic handed out awards and in 2014, the winners were:-

Best Theatre Production 2014 – Michael Twaits: The Libertine Has Left the Building Best Cabaret Production 2014 – Lady Carol: Lost and Found Best Work-In-Progress Production – In Our Hands (Smoking Apples) Judges’ Awards (Theatre) – Where the White Stops (Antler Theatre); How a Man Crumbled(Clout Theatre); Tatterdemalion (Flabbergast Theatre); and Dan Lees’ Brainchild Judges’ Awards (Cabaret) – Neil Henry’s Impossible; Baby Lame: Don’t Call It a Comeback; Anna Lou Larkin: Anna-Lou’s Contes d’Amour, A Load of Crepe (The Late Night Shop) This Is Cabaret Award: Best Emerging Artist – The Ruby Darlings

There were no real surprises in that list. All were worthy choices.

The Libertine Has Left The Building (Michael Twaits) is a remarkable and thought-provoking piece of theatrical energy. Twaits is a performer with the skill to match his searing vision and he is certainly a theatre craftsman to look out for. His work can be divisive, but only in the sense, so rare, that many people can see his work at the same time but have wholly different experiences and reactions as result. A vivid and visceral craftsman, Twaits is a star in ascendency.

There were two other shows I saw at the Mimetic Festival worthy of special mention, despite not winning awards.  (I am sure there were many others, but I could not see everything that was on offer)

The first is Lady Celeste, a unique cabaret experience I have encountered before. Read my earlier review of Lady Celeste.

In this outing, the musical accompaniment was much more sound than previously, permitting a greater sense of appreciation of the lead performer's musicality.  Once again, Lady Celeste proved to be adept at vicious, but humorous, barbs with hapless audience members, notwithstanding a bronchial infection of some kind. The crowd responded warmly to the inventive improvisation. If picked up by a television network, Lady Celeste has world domination within her sights. Immensely enjoyable.

Enjoyable in an entirely different way, was Kill The Beast's production of a story by former Doctor Who, Tom Baker - The Boy Who Kicked Pigs. A dark, almost pitch black, comedy about a troubled, slightly demonic lad, Robert Calgari, who is willing to do any kind of atrocious deed to ensure his "stardom'. Clever use of projections, multiple-role playing and a frenetic sense of wild comedy, combine to produce a grim treat which makes Sweeney Todd seem positively Bambiesque. Laugh-out loud funny in parts, slyly satirical in others, it was propelled by the sheer unrelenting talent of the two male cast members (in particular) and the overall conceit. An unexpected and unpredictable treat.

Artistic Director of Finger In The Pie, Alexander Parsonage, wants the Mimetic Festival to become the central hub for emerging physical theatre making and cabaret in the UK.  As Colonel Pickering might say: By George, I think you've done it!

Make time in your diaries now for the Mimetic Festival in 2015.