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Photo: Amy Downes

‘Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live,’ says author Haruki Murakami. There is no such place where time stands still. The future belongs to progress, innovation and grand designs: a dominant and insistent force enhancing the lives for more than two industrialised centuries. But is this something to be always held in such high esteem?

From a playful introduction to a thought-provoking finale, Feral follows the experiences of a young boy named Joe as he makes his way through memories of his childhood town and the ripple effect the urban restructuring had on it. Created in 2012 by Ross MacKay and showcased at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2013 and 2014, Feral is an innovative cross-artwork piece that portrays these changes in time and place through a blend of puppetry, film and live performance. The show has received international acclaim and has been revived by Tortoise in a Nutshell for the Hidden Door Festival at Granton Gasworks, marking the company’s return to on-stage performance.

Artfully laying the groundwork of a small world and every day interactions, the performers manipulate lights, smell, sounds, installations and puppets to create a sensory experience fizzing with energy and transporting the audience to an idyllic seaside town and its comfortable, domestic community life. The spectacular design work and different forms of expression merge and tumble over each other allowing the story to immediately capture, involve and stimulate through this sensory overload, bending the line between a film and real-life performance.

However, this is just the beginning of a bewildering journey as the intimate interactions and connection between the characters also explore compelling social issues the community faces. The storytelling itself is deceptively simple but executed with sophistication through a candid account of the gradual decline of local businesses and the consequent social and moral turbulence; the scenes have deep emotional impact. The audience witnesses an honest portrayal of a chaotic modern world through visuals more powerful than any revelations in words, especially when these aspects reach an ecstatic high point within the performance – picturing vandalism and violence. The director shares a vision which, as a human experience, is visceral and accessible, resonating powerfully in our contemporary life, urging the audience to be socially engaged and question the controversial.

Joe’s experience in the parallel reality echoes the real world: a feeling of being out of place in one’s own home. When life changes at top speed, the feeling of connectedness to other people and to one’s own life can become lost. Although the little town’s challenges portrayed in this multimedia performance offer no easy answers, they leave the viewer contemplating what is possible and what is sustainable in terms of a regenerative future.

Inesa Vėlavičiūtė