LEO
DIRECTOR: Daniel Brière
PERFORMER: William Bonnett
VENUE: Arena State Theatre
UNTIL: December 8, Tuesdays to Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm (Tuesdays R30, Wednesday and Thursday R80, Friday to Sundays R100)
RATING: ****
Theatre takes on many guises as playwrights, actors and performers find different ways of telling stories. Part of the charm of Leo is the imaginative use of the medium as the stage becomes a space of play.
This one puts an innovative spin on solo performance as creating a mirror image becomes the way in which a very particular story is told.
Where you find yourself, what you do with those circumstances and how you look at something, push against it, go with the flow and perhaps find a way of turning your world upside down and inside out all becomes part of this particular journey in a most playful manner.
It’s theatre without text which means it can travel anywhere and tell a story that makes sense everywhere and to anyone who is watching – young or old – who will experience it very differently as they bounce along with the ideas that are thrown out there, this way and that to do with what you will.
It all started with a brilliant but simple idea which has cleverly been turned into a theatrical adventure that’s as novel as it is enchanting. Your mind switches from one room to another and back, with reality and gravity constantly juggled, never fixed and yet totally mesmerising.
Bonnett is as agile as he is precise and while the production is little more than an hour, he has to be on the mark from beginning to end and make the work seem as playful and seamless as it does. It’s an extraordinary exercise, which pulls the audience into his crazy and sometimes inexplicable world from start to finish. But he’s determined to unravel and solve everything that comes his way.
There’s a wistful charm that lingers as Leo tries to find his way around his given circumstances, working through the different options he discovers in the space available to him.
It’s a production that’s come all the way from Canada and travels the world, but sadly on the night we were there, it didn’t have the audience it deserved.
Leo will appeal to the whole family as children will be entranced by the sheer spectacle, while adults will have some intriguing ideas to grapple with as they lose them- selves in the sheer ingenuity of what is unfolding on stage.
Make the effort and go and experience the magic of theatrical invention.