HorseheadFaulty Optic Theatre Co.11 NovemberPegasus TheatrePeople would go miles for a theatrical horse once,” an elderly blue puppet sadly remarks in Faulty Optic’s latest production, Horsehead. Fortunately we only had to go as far as the Pegasus Theatre for this particular nag – an uncanny experience it was too, from the first gradual realisation, on entering the intimate space, that the narrator Daniel Padden was sitting approximately four feet away and staring at the audience through binoculars. Aa strange start to a strange play about the opportune love that blossoms between a horse fanatic permanently dressed as a pair of hind legs and a crippled dancer blessed with hair very like a mane, who together strive for “theatrical horse perfection”, melded together as one pantomime being.It soon appears, however, that the back and the front of the horse were sundered long ago, leaving the former hind legs (a fragile little man with gimlet eyes and a gaunt mouth) sickeningin a sanatorium, daydreaming of his former glory. Rreduced to half a being he can only replay over and over his old musical recordings: like them he has become obsolete. Aas he imagines the dying horse head, which he abandoned in a wasteland, and remorsefully remarks, “Ddid anyone, Ii wonder, ever find her?”, a butcher’s van trundles past in the background, visible only to the audience (one of many moments when you’re unsure whether to laugh or be horrified). Then one night the vengeful spectre of the nag returns to the hospital to claim his legs as punishment.A story about loss, grief, and the various ways of being broken, this is a characteristically haunting tale from the Faulty Optic crew (Liz Wwalker and Gavin Glover), who work with puppets, mechanisms and live projection, and the writer Edward Carey. Iit is a partnership that was destined to be: Ccarey’s previous characters include “an old man who lives in a leather armchair which is more significant than him,” while Faulty Optic have been known to meet their doom being “sucked into oblivion down the back of the sofa”. The unsettling real-life sentiment that “there are so many broken things in the world” is here written large in a character who suffers not just from a broken heart and a guilty conscience, but also “equine herpes virus, pneumonia and phantom limb dementia”. Wwhat makes his situation even more poignant is the fantastically creepy realisation of the sanatorium. Ppadden’s soundtrack, pre-recorded or created live, uses church bells, creaking, the whistling of the wind and operatic muzak to emphasise the eerie emptiness of the ward. Wwalker and Glover have finely tuned the movements of the melancholy patient and the beady-eyed nurse, emphasising the awkward dodder of the one and the brisk annoyance of the other. Aapparently, this patient is so neglected he’s even fed meals of pebbles.This delightfully idiosyncratic side of the production recalls Lynch’s Eeraserhead– in particular a moment when the bed-bound puppet tries to call the nurse because someone is noisily digging a grave under his hospital bed, which is making him nervous. Aand where else can you see a beetle-infested horse skull described as a “mouldy pile of love”? also harks back to the film animation of Jan Ssvankmejer and the Quay Brothers, even more so because the entire production is conducted in semi-darkness.When I spoke to Glover, he observed that there are few contemporary puppet companies in Eengland who are pushing the boundaries of live film and sound in the way Faulty Optic do, although there are younger groups working in London (“though they’re not as dark as us” he added with pride). Aalthough Hhorsehead might seem saturated with nostalgia in terms of subject matter (the parting shot is “I watched the old horses being dismantled…”), the fresh voice that Faulty Optic bring to this makes it truly worth seeing. Aand the beetle-infestation scene is worth the entrance fee alone.ARCHIVE: 6th week MT 2005
