LONDON INTERNATIONAL MIME FESTIVAL 2015
KRAKEN is Trygve Wakenshaw’s second solo show – a fifty-minute mime, loosely based on the escapades of Wakenshaw’s bestial, possibly eponymous character creation.
Two things really stand out about KRAKEN. The first is the hold that Wakenshaw has on his audience: it’s pretty much unmitigated, and is a product of a bunch of qualities – his physical control, his unpredictability, but mainly his total belief in the world he creates. The second thing, and it depends on the first, is Wakenshaw’s willingness to run with things that others would shy away from – not because they’re obscene (although sometimes this is the case) but because they’re so tangential or obscure. For example, during a mimed juggling skit there is a callback to a previously mimed looping pedal – we imagine the balls continuing to juggle unassisted, so that Wakenshaw is able to reach down for more. It shouldn’t work, and it probably shouldn’t by funny, but it both does and is.
KRAKEN is, like Squidboy before it, a great addition to the non-whiteface mime slash clown work recently popularised by Doctor Brown, Red Bastard and others. But it also belongs in its own category: simultaneously disgusting and charming, and characterised by a ballsy commitment to unlikely narratives.