SYDNEY FESTIVAL: MY BICYCLE LOVES YOU
My Bicycle Loves You, Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, January 11-15; director Patrick Nolan in conversation with Caroline Baum post-show January 14; then on to Perth Festival. Photos: Jamie Williams
LEGS ON THE WALL is a company that’s never been short of, nor shy of, invention and re-invention. The latest bout resulted in the appointment of Patrick Nolan as artistic director, a little over a year ago. And this new show comes out of that.
My Bicycle Loves You begins deep in the musty-dusty vaults (well they’re not actually musty or dusty, but you get the drift) of the National Film and Sound Archive’s Corrick Collection. The treasure trove of flickering celluloid cached there unleashed such a torrent of imagination and flights of fancy it’s hard to know where to begin.
The Corrick Family was a troupe of travelling singers and vaudeville players from New Zealand. They settled in Launceston in the early 1900s on the back of a successful tour of the island and became Australia’s latter-day von Trapps – with a twist. Nolan, with the company and artistic collaborators playwright Beatrix Christian and designer Anna Tregloan have devised a sort of story-narrative around key images and clips from the Corrick Collection. And, with video artist Mic Gruchy, projection consultant Tim Gruchy and lighting designer Damien Cooper have produced a 70-minute show that reflects, riffs off and bounces around and through these foundations to dizzying and deliciously bewildering effect.
There is absolutely no point asking “what’s it about?” and it’s also virtually impossible to describe the show without sounding ridiculous or giving away some of its most brilliant and amazing moments. It is chock-full of brilliant and amazing moments, as well as surreal, poignant and laugh-aloud moments too.
Legs on the Wall is described as a “physical theatre” company which says a lot and not much: the performers are dancers, acrobats, actors, singers and creative forces in their own right. At the moment the company consists of Alicia Battestini, Tom Flanagan, Alexandra Harrison, Aimee Horne, Kate Sherman, Matt Wilson and Emil Wolk; and they’re joined for this production by a brilliant four piece band, in the pit, led by composer Ben Walsh with Luke Dubber, Eden Ottignon and Matt Ottignon.
Each performer brings a fascinatingly different physical presence to the troupe; and different personalities emerge during the show that result in some unexpected tangents and destinations. They are living in an apartment block (a back projection that simultaneously features Corrick footage) and in their every-day ordinary weirdness they’re not unlike the inhabitants of 28 Barbary Lane – in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City; except he’d have had to be on something really powerful to take his characters quite as far as this mob goes.
As it is, it’s a delight to become so briefly immersed in this fantasy world. Making cameras, ropes, mirrors and projections help the performers do the things they do in this show is at times astonishing and at others, simply amazing. My Bicycle Loves You belongs in a genre and a time all its own and the end result is 70 minutes of bold and beautiful creativity.
