AutoCannibal

He might be the planet’s last survivor but Mitch Jones stirs up pathos and laughter, even as he finally eats himself.

In his dystopian space of rubbish furniture, plastic bags and skewered lighting, he first blends into a smoothie all his available bits – dandruff, hairs, piss, sweat – but with the theatrical aplomb of a TV chef.

Perhaps he’s a former newsreader. In his shredded suit, he looks like those others flashing up on the old TVs amongst the scaffolding, with news of meteoric temperatures and new laws allowing the sale of body-parts.

AutoCannibal is a one -hour spin of physical theatre fragments created and performed solo by Jones and directed by his partner (and fellow circus performer) Masha Terentieva.  Some snatches lack impact or could be further developed and integrated, and this wordless theatre offers little in the way of deeper back story. 

But Jones so endears with his sad yet playful, very Chaplinesque Little Tramp, leaping quicksilver between mad dancing, a charade of human postures and attitudes reliving debates of the old days, and an hilarious sexual advance on a rather curvy Rubenesque, over-stuffed rubbish bag. 

He’s supported by Bonnie Knight’s raucous, even stirring sound design and Paul Lim’s dissembling lighting.  By end, Jones can’t resist the saw suspended in space and commits the final horror of hunger; it’s very confronting but the dark comic image stays with you.

Not “too soon”, it seems, for jokes about our environmental eradication!

Martin Portus

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