The existentialists from Ummo are back: Mump and Smoot in Exit, at Theatre Network. A review.

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

Mump and Smoot arrive, as always, from a mysterious place, through the crowd — inhabitants of another mysterious place, the theatre (that’s us!). And, as always, they’re mid-adventure, mid-conversation, en route to the stage.

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It’s dark; they’re carrying lanterns. Each is chained to the heavy burlap sack they’re dragging. And we’re never quite sure whether their nightmare is us, or vice versa.

After a decade’s absence, the ‘clowns of horror’ from the planet Ummo are back among us, at Theatre Network to premiere a new show, Mump and Smoot In Exit. And it’s an original, unusual even in an archive with a notable attraction to the grotesque and the macabre.

In their collected canon, the interplanetary travellers, who speak Ummonian (a language that hints now and then at English, “Wow”, “I’m outta here”), have found themselves in locations we’ve all experienced: a tent in the wilderness, a wake, an airplane, a restaurant negotiating spaghetti…. Eruptions of blood and gore, unhinged entrails, severed limbs, rarely to be found in Trip Advisor, just happen. The familiar is a slippery slope it seems.

Anyhow, in Mump and Smoot in Exit, the latest from the prize Canadian theatre artists Michael Kennard, John Turner and director Karen Hines (whose character Pochsy is one of the country’s great creations too), they have arrived in a smoky place where none of us has been. And we’re discovering it together. There are clues, to be sure (design consultant: Andraya Diogo). It’s a landscape dominated by a skeletal tree (Beckett’s vagabonds, waiting around Godot to show up, would recognize it), full of bones and skulls, enigmatic monuments, a gargoyle with glowing red eyes. The entrance is an electrified archway of skulls. And they are not always alone there (Lauren Brady, listed in the credits as “Actor,” in full spectral get-up).

Mump and Smoot (Michael Kennard and John Turner) In Exit, with Lauren Brady as Gog. Theatre Network, photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

There will be a moment for Mump and Smoot when it dawns on them where they are; it’s a moment we’ve been wondering about, too. Incidentally this poses a special problem for a writer: there’s so little I can tell you about the story without spoiling it. So I’m leaving that aside, for your own good.

Mump (Kennard) is the bossier, shirtier, more aggressive one in a tuxedo jacket, with the single periscope horn. He’s the one who takes charge and gets mightily irritated when things go south. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Smoot (Turner) is more pliable and impulsive, distracted by the audience, and ready to play. If he were to see a skull (and he does) he’d pick it up and give it a pat on the bonce. I’m pretty sure I heard “alas poor Yorick” emerging from the Ummonian phrase book. Ditto “don’t touch” from Mump. Everything that happens in In Exit is a test of this comically fraught, signature relationship.

Mump (Michael Kennard) and Smoot (John Turner) “In Exit,” Theatre Network. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

They arrive onstage in a kind of daze, as if the show is an aftermath of something. Smoot isn’t feeling 100 per cent. Mump, who’s whispering, isn’t quite his usual confident self either; he looks oddly bewildered, then downright appalled. They are trying to remember how they got where they are. And it’s a measure of Kennard and Turner as actors in action, in detailed comic performances, that we understand, without language, an existential conundrum.

Smoot, with his chipmunk voice, is the follower, the voluble one who ingratiates himself with the audience (we go “awwww” and Mump grimaces). Mump, the skeptic, rolls his eyes; he makes of congenital exasperation an entire repertoire of reactions in Kennard’s performance. His characteristic gesture is throwing his hands up, an eloquent ‘whatever’ at moments of maximum aggro.

Victor Snaith Hernandez’s lighting is rather spectacular. And Greg Morrison’s superb original score, with its strange jagged dissonances and mad violin riffs is in itself an aural exposition.   

It’s a show unusually laden with props. And much to Mump’s chagrin (and the general hilarity in the house), they were wayward on opening night. But hey, that gave us a chance to appreciate Kennard and Turner’s skills as improvisers. For me, the more overt sequences with the audience, a group invocation to Ummo for example and a bilingual conversation soliciting individual audience members to answer a question, might be tuned up, along with the scenes involving puppet versions of the characters. So far, the seams do show a bit.

The particular genius of Mump and Smoot is the way they put the physical — no, the visceral — into dark comedy. We’re only held together by a wing and a prayer, apparently; otherwise our arms and legs would fly off, a foot here, a bone or two there. These things happen when you’re a clown of horror. And, speaking as we are of visceral, there’s lip-smacking fine dining onstage.

But in Mump and Smoot in Exit, black comedy is infiltrated by questions of good and evil, life and death. Religion — they are disciples of the god Ummo — is put to the test. Is memory a haunting? Can you really know if you’re in a bad dream or actually conscious? Mump and Smoot In Exit wonders about things like that. And so do we. It’s high-stakes hilarity, and we laugh and keep on laughing.

REVIEW

Mump and Smoot in Exit

Theatre: Theatre Network

Created and performed by: Michael Kennard and John Turner

Directed by: Karen Hines

Running: through Oct. 27

Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca