Noodles

4
Reviewer's Rating

LONDON INTERNATIONAL MIME FESTIVAL 2015

NoFit State are a company whose work feels closely tied to that of other experimental companies who emerged during the late 80s and early 90s – like Forced Entertainment and Told By An Idiot – whose work similarly has a rough and ready, anarchic feel, reflecting a mood of disillusionment evocative of punk.

Noodles is a suitably irreverent show: five performers lead us through a series of surreal vignettes, involving magic tricks, acrobatics and clowning – all loosely connected to the shows culinary theme. It is a messy, nonsensical and infectious hour of entertainment, with plenty of imaginative turns: pubic hair, the Virgin Mary, smoking apparatus – almost anything can be constituted by the noodle.

This show is a slap in the face of convention – refusing to be pretty, to be coherent, or to have anything to say. NoFit State have a provocative energy that younger companies similarly born out of a climate of austerity might learn something from – though in their cheerful disregard, they perhaps belong to another era.