Teatro Delusio

Teatro Delusio is a show by the German company, Family Floez. When we were up in Edinburgh a couple of years ago, we saw their Ristorante Immortale at St Stephen's. Their style is a wonderful mix of physical theatre, masks and puppetry. In Teatro Delusio we find ourselves backstage in a theatre. We are looking at the backs of flats in the area usually occupied by the backstage crew and the cast on their way to the stage, which in this case was out of sight upstage centre. We hear snatches of the invisible audience arriving and settling, the orchestra, the opera, the ballet and later a slapstick in the style of silent movie comedies, and even later the three Musketeers. We see none of the performances because the backstage area is a bustle with diverse characters and there is never a dull moment. What makes this remarkable is that we know there are only three actors who between them play something like 29 characters. The masks are incredible and characters are instantly recognisable. There is no dialogue because there is no talking backstage! Yet we know everything these characters think and feel because of the body language. As a director and an actor, I think we would learn a great deal from watching this company in action. We rely too heavily on the words to carry the message rather than look at the accompanying body language. The first character we are introduced to in Teatro Delusio is the theatre ghost, a puppet of a diminutive girl, handled with extraordinary care and delicacy by all three actors. It is through the ghost that we are drawn into the always absorbing, frequently hilarious and occasionally poignant backstage world. I could identify with the rotund stage manager in love with the leading opera singer until he gave birth to twins - you had to be there to understand. The ancient violinist, escaping the bustle of the parade of arriving musicians, sitting in the nearest available chair before being shooed onstage (out of our sight) by the imperious conductor. A gay ballet master, allowed to "preen" an endless procession of ballerinas (remember there are only three real actors in the whole cast), appealed to the old roue in me, before he came downstage and singled me out for propositioning. Everyone interested in the theatre either as a performer or as audience should see this show as like Michael Frayn's Noises Off or Ronald Harwood's The Dresser it throws an intriguing light on theatrical life backstage. As for the Family Floez, I see they are already at work on Hotel Paradiso. The only disappointment was a partially filled Nuffield Theatre. This company deserve so much better and please watch out for them, hopefully at a theatre near you soon.