Elba
Ishan Mahabir-Stokes
Bridge House Theatre
Star rating: 3
Elba: Mediterranean tourist resort, invaded by almost every power you can think of and famed for Napoleon’s 10 month resident sovereign rule in 1814. Ishan Mahabir-Stokes, who also directs, welds all this into a 60 minute entertainment which is part dance, part mime and part dialogue with a bit of song thrown in. The plot gives us Napoleon (Constant Vigier) re-invigorating the economy of Elba by making honey – and it’s rather fun that there is “Elba” (actually SE1) honey for sale at the entrance.
Mahabir-Stokes plays a timeless Elba islander – trying to get his children to school, singing a traditional song (rather well) acting as a tourist guide or cavorting with Napoleon a couple of centuries ago. The language is deliberately modern which, with references to, for example, Gails and Pizza Express. spices up the humour.
Both men are talented performers. Mahabir-Stokes is an outstanding mime artist and he uses his physicality and dance skills to good effect. And they are slick together especially in their dance interludes when Napoleon – portrayed here as ridiculous – is trying to escape. Although there are so many of these that at times it feels like time filling to get up to the 60 minutes required for Edinburgh.
It’s amusing and original but it can’t make up its mind what it’s trying to do. I realise that this is probably a deliberate decision to blur the edges of what sort of a show it is but from the front it feels a bit bitty and in need of more work. One senses that it was devised in action rather than crafted for coherence.
Nonetheless I wish them well for their forthcoming run at Edinburgh.
