Mongolmongol – My Wonderful Left Hook
Uniflex Physical Theatre
5:30pm, Fri 17 Mar 2000
Score: 5
Short Review: Indistinct
My Wonderful Left Hook by Korean company MongolMongol is part mime, part dance, part musical. Unfortunately, all the seperate pieces don’t really gel together that well to form a coherent piece of work; more a well-produced jumble.
The positives first: there’s a cello, so I’m happy from the start (references: 1 2), and the cellist also has a wonderfully haunting singing voice. So the aural aspect of the performance was great, as was the lighting and overall direction. The dancer (sorry, no names!) was also elegant; the movement of her arms was mesmerising.
Now the negatives: the miming varied from competent to pretty bloody awful. What the hell happened to the baby? I’ve got no idea, the miming was that bad… did he throw it away? drop it? kill it? make it’s head fall off? It’ll take someone with either (a) a whole lot of imagination, or (b) a script to explain it to me. The plot was outlined on a flyer presented to patrons; good thing, too.
So, a mixed-performance piece which only really satisfied the ears. A pity, really, since I think there’s a gem of an idea in amongst it. But kudos to Mongolmongol for bringing it out here – they’re all really nice people (just a shame the piece wasn’t up to scratch).