Stowaways by Compagnie Phillipe Genty, March 19 1996

By Compagnie Phillipe Genty

Playhouse Arts Centre Melbourne until April 6, 1996

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 19 March 1996

In every production by Philippe Genty, I cannot help gaping at the sheer audacity of his illusions. It is as we are children again in state of wonder at the pleasures and miracles of this world. His Australian show, Stowaways is no exception.

The stark stage space is transformed by superb lighting design (Phillip Lethlean) and the impeccable visual images conjured up by the company under the auspice of the deity, Genty. People disappear down invisible holes in the floor, are eaten by a huge sea-brain monster or are transmogrified into cardboard cut-outs to be folded up and carried away. 

Images are mutable. As in Drifting two years ago, puppet-people are interchangeable with real people. Grotesque clowns mutate into able-bodied people, faces turn to clay, legs are ripped off, a tiny man grows like Topsy. Two puppeteers/stage hands inhabit a nether-world beneath the stage space, forcing creatures up to the surface and dragging them back down again.

Admittedly, the opening segments are so startling they are almost too consistently miraculous to beat. Stowaways is somehow less consistently powerful than previous Genty productions but no less magical.

The more lyrical section on the ocean bed, rocks and shore comprised less illusion and more dance which at least allowed me to give my gaping mouth a rest.

This Australia ensemble has an astonishing array of physical and manipulatory skills, but my eye was constantly drawn by Meredith Kitchen, dancer. She is magnetic.

There is a great joy associated with abandoning oneself to illusion and astonishment. Genty gives our child-like selves freedom to roam about in an animated world.