By Harry Malt

BlackSkyWhite and USSR Was Here at the ICA London International Mime Festival, directed by Dimitry Aryupin.

The stage is split by an enormous wedge standing on it's side, sharp end pointing out towards the audience. Blue, red and white pools of light struggle for power over the unfathomable darkness that looms forwards from the back of the stage. The beginning of the performance is eerily metered out by a deafening soundtrack boom booming from the deep theatrical dark. Stirring thoughts of Kurt Vonnegut trapped underground, above the fire bombing of Dresden, the bombs falling, the footsteps of approaching giants.

Staggering and twisting slowly from the gloom comes a partially human, partially automaton shape, recognisable in form but not in movement, it lurches across the stage. Dreamlike sequences are acted out over the next hour, at times frantic, unnerving and at others, graceful, contemplative. The reminiscences of past lives and horrors, the contorted changing face of the old super power and the unreconcilable void left by extreme death and loss. The speechless figures of Egor Moiseev and Marcella Soltan bear these notions and ideas in and out of the shadows, pulled into the darkness they resurface once more like memories, day dreams or hallucinations.

The theme being loosely predetermined, "20 million Russian dead in the world war and a further 20 million lost to Stalin and emigration," The onus of exact interpretation lies with the audience. Even with no preconceived idea of the show it is easy to read the physical vernacular of oppression, claustrophobia and maddening restraint, testament to the skill and dexterity of the performers. An interesting thought perhaps that in this age of mass communication that still, so much can be conveyed without words, audible or visual. Is it possible for this English audience to translate the Russian mime?

I wonder how much the audience's personal interpretation varies from performance to performance from country to country and how much is subsequently lost with our limited understanding of what it is to feel and to understand this uniquely Russian topic.

This show looks like the bastard love child of Chris Cunningham's Rubber Johnny and and a very very distant cousin of Marcel Marceaux, it is, awful and fascinating and leaves me feeling a need to know more, to discover, to understand, to ask why and how, to talk.

Images courtesy of Arthur Leone PR