Trygve Wakenshaw: Nautilus. Image via Fringe World 2017.
Trygve Wakenshaw returns to FringeWorld after popular success with Kraken and Squidboy in previous visits. Nautilus continues his marine theme, sequential skit performances reflecting the logarithmic spiral chambers of the titular mollusc’s shell structure.
Taking the empty stage, Wakenshaw has our attention as he flings himself into abandoned disco dancing, his gangly limbs going every which way. The music stops, he holds his last pose, no matter how ungainly, in a perfect start to his next impression. From a chicken by a busy thoroughfare to a sheep with initiative, Rapunzel’s hair grooming logistics to a fringe festival performer cracking mime jokes on stage, Wakenshaw finds absurd ideas and follows them through to logical comic conclusions, taking the audience with him.
Wakenshaw knows his audience and their partiality to fringe performance fun and games. He engages in extended interaction with the audience, two separate lip sync sequences revolving around the extreme discomfort of some good sports in the front row. The relief when Wakenshaw himself steps up to the stage in response to the shout out for volunteers by another of his characters is palpable, but the joke turns on itself again when the volunteer Wakenshaw outmimes Wakenshaw’s ‘professional mime’ character and is sent packing.
Highlights also include elaborate and extended details of a dinosaur’s bedtime routines and rituals after being shot with a tranquiliser dart, only to then have the hunter execute his original devious plot on the hapless sleeper. Wakenshaw delights in self-referential callbacks, with ‘Jesus’ appearing in response to random blasphemous exclamations. Sometimes the callbacks take more leadtime, connecting several apparently unconnected skits by recalling earlier characters or by the shared thematic echoes between them.
Wakenshaw’s vocabulary of characters is defined by his carefully monitored physical feats. Every facial muscle responds on cue, and his willingness to literally crawl along the ground in the most awkward fashion imitating a caterpillar is clear dedication to clowning. The sections of disco dancing mayhem are equally considered, with the most random appearing moves setting up his physical stance for the next section. Stage positioning is tight, allowing consecutive sketches to occur simultaneously with each other, by dint of collective imagination siting various characters occupying other space on the otherwise empty set. The audience follows willingly, suspension of disbelief easy with such a fun leader in this flight of imagination.
Playful, precise, full of imaginative curlicues in presentation, Nautilus is yet another delight from Wakenshaw. Clowning is lifted as an artform by the whimsical contributions from this Kiwi mime, and FringeWorld audiences respond enthusiastically by returning again and again.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Trygve Wakenshaw: Nautilus
Presented by The Blue Room Theatre Summer Nights and Don’t Be Lonely
Performed by Trygve Wakenshaw
Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre of Western Australia
27 January – 4 February 2017
