L’Amour Du Risque – Manipulate Festival
In this show by Compagnie Bakélite, a man (show creator Olivier Rannou) is served dinner by a collection of automatised vacuum cleaners piloted off-stage by Morien Nolot. Covered in small tables equipped with everything you need for a meal, including romantic music, tablecloths, a candle and a surplus of spoons, these vacuum actors roam around the lined stage with a mixture of robotic awkwardness and occasional personality, bumping into some objects and ignoring others in their mechanical pursuit of simple functionality.
The result is a comedic and hypnotic mix of Jacques Tati and a Pixar short. We watch as these vacuum cleaners struggle with their restaurant jobs, sometimes cleverly, sometimes not, and sometimes both, under Rannou's constant but mostly non-judgemental gaze. As the cust...