Out of the many venues at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Summerhall Arts is one that shines for its programme of innovative theatre, cabaret, dance or music. In 2019 the Bristol-based company, Mechanimal, brought the award-winning Vigil to this Fringe, and this year they are back Wild Thing!. Created and performed by Tom Bailey, with sound design by Xavier Velastin, this sequel likewise reflects Mechanimal’s continuing research into the urgent issue of mass extinction.
In Tech Cube Zero, a small studio theatre, Bailey can be seen lying on the stage as the audience enter. His gaze and posture are on the defensive, as if he is waiting for something untoward to happen. He begins by doing a sequence of animal impressions, the names of which flash onto a screen. Species like, Delicate-Skinned Salamander, Ugly Face Scorpion Fish, Chicken Snake, Tibetan Net-frog evoke surprise and hilarity in the audience as the accompanying impressions unfold before our very eyes. A reminder comes up on the screen that these are the real-names of animals. In fact, they are all on the scientific Red List of globally extinct and endangered species.
The performer hands each audience member a card with an animal name on it, asking us to make up a story for the person sitting next to us about the animal on our card. I received Tonkin snub-nosed monkey, while the man sitting next to me, received the Pygmy three-toed sloth. I realise I know nothing at all about the Tonkin monkey and I am forced to make up a story about what it might look like and where it lives. Immediately after the show, my curiosity is sparked and I google ‘my’ monkey, discovering a lot about it.
Wild Thing!, created and performed Tom Bailey. Photo credit Jack Offord.
Later in the show, Bailey re-enacts a mock VR safari. Putting on a headset, he impersonates a moment in the life of a Bali Tiger, accompanied by a voiceover, recalling British broadcaster and biologist David Attenborough, together with emotional sound effects. The tone changes abruptly as Tom Bailey removes his headset and empties a large box, scattering a huge heap of bones and skulls across the stage, a stark, concrete image of the death of so many species in this age of rapid extinction.
The show concludes, with a short documentary, charting the long walk that this talented performer made from the UK to Oslo. He had been invited to perform in Scandinavia and decided he would turn the journey into a kind of pilgrimage, allowing him to connect with nature along the way.
Wild Thing! is highly entertaining, while at the same time heightening our awareness of the rapid and often alarming changes that are happening to our planet.
This post was written by the author in their personal capacity.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.
This post was written by Margaret Rose.
The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.
