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Jackson Lane, London

In the not-too-distant future, if you have an itch you only have to ask your Intronaut to scratch it…internally. Nose blocked? Not enough fibres in your diet? Nothing to fuss over. Order your Intronaut (via, of course, the Intronaut app) to travel through your body and sort everything out.

Green Ginger and their associates take us on an internal trip through our own body and mind. Using puppetry, physical theatre, and animation, we travel around in a tiny submarine, catching glimpses into a not-too-improbable future. A grooving and rapping Intronaut keeps us company. She is quirky and funny but she is also bored out of her mind, stuck in the tiny vessel. And what about the host? Well, he is lonely and has “designer’s block”… an excellent recipe for laughs but also for potential disaster.

Intronauts is funny and extremely creative, and the work and dedication that has been devoted to it is obvious. A transparent material covers the scene and acts as a screen for the projections, and the animation and the live action takes place behind it. The crew works seamlessly and the soundscape works perfectly. Then, why the three stars? Because of the ending, which might have been intended as a cliff-hanger but didn’t work.  Just as we were intrigued and hooked with the twist, it just stopped. No one realised it had ended and many members of the audience, including me, were taken aback and left wondering.

It is a smart conception, funny and well-executed, but I would recommend a few tweaks.

  • Physical Theatre
  • By Green Ginger
  • A co-production with Nordland Visual Theatre (Norway)
  • Directed by Emma Williams
  • Composed by Simon Preston
  • Design: Chris Pirie
  • Devising Performers: Adam Fuller, Emma Keaveney-Roys, Chris Pirie
  • Jackson Lane, London
  • Until 13 January 2019

About The Author

Reviewer (UK)

Owen Davies was brought up in London but has Welsh roots. He was raised on chapel hymns, Handel oratorios and Mozart arias. He began going to the theatre in the 1960s and, as a teenager, used to stand at the back of the Old Vic stalls to watch Olivier's National Theatre productions. He also saw many RSC productions at the Aldwych in the 1960s. At this time he also began to see operas at Covent Garden and developed a love for Mozart, Verdi, and Richard Strauss. After a career as a social worker and a trade union officer, Owen has retired from paid employment but as a 'mature student' he has recently gained a certificate in Opera Studies from Rose Bruford College.​

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