The Three Lives of Lucy Cabrol, 25 October 1995 *****

By Theatre de Complicite

At The Playhouse, Melbourne Arts Centre until Nov 4, 1995

Melbourne Arts Festival

Reviewer: Kate Herbert 25 October 1995 for The Melbourne Times

Stars: *****

Lilo Baur as Lucy

By the final spectacular image of The Three Lives of Lucy Cabrol, I was spellbound. The sheer beauty and magnitude of both the visuals and the message left me gasping, open-mouthed.

 

The delicacy and finesse of this production, developed by the multi-lingual Theatre de Complicite, is counterpoised against its rough-as-gutsiness. It is gloriously wild, seamlessly weaving together the twin comic and tragic.

 

The ensemble pulsates with energy, skill and vision. Its delicacy and finesse is counterpoised against a contrary rough-as-gutsiness. It is gloriously wild, seamlessly weaving together those tetchy twins, the comic and the tragic.

 

These actors are clowns and tragedians, employing elaborate and exciting physicality with some profoundly moving self-narrated text.

 

It is a poignant and epic love story. It is Mother Courage or Bertollucci's 1900. It is a fable of the life-death-life cycle. It follows the life, other life and after-life of Lucy Cabrol, a tiny bird-like peasant child-adult. She is cruelly dubbed "The Cocadrille" (witch) and abused by her brothers until they hound her off their family land.

 Lucy is played by Lilo Baur who is ,herself, a miniature human dynamo, an unstoppable spinning top on stage. Even in the darkest moments the whole company sparkles with energy and playfulness, driven by muscle, adrenalin and their arresting vision.

 

The style has the lyrical, mythic quality of a tale told around the village fire by an elder. It reeks of history, passion, commitment and metaphorical imagery. The actors create with only their bodies and odd bits of wood and furniture, every part of the village, the forest, chooks, pigs, cows and even both world wars.

 

The design is deceptively simple and the lighting is dramatic and at times we peer into the light, the half-life to catch a glimpse of the lives of Lucy, the Cocadrille.

 

KATE HERBERT

280wd