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Mr Moon

Mr Moon

C Aquila, Aug 7-8, 10-17

by Gareth K Vile

Like Funkadelic, if they had been influenced by Eastern European cabaret and featured a Mexican Marching Band, Mr Moon are a psychedelic take on musical theatre that draws upon mime, mask-work and ferocious instrumental workouts that suddenly switch on the emotional intensity. The story is one of the traveller players, banned from the cities yet still peddling their mysterious messages to any assembled audience.

Gig theatre has been a strong presence at the Edinburgh Fringe in the past decade, but Mr Moon blur the boundaries between theatre, cabaret and concert. The musicians are the actors are the characters who emerge from a drama which appears to be happening beyond the stage: a dysfunctional family of those who dare to step beyond the mundane, they roar and rage, seduce and cajole the audience to capture an atmosphere that never resolves into a logical narrative, but evokes a world that cannot be tamed or defined.

At their most intense, two performers become moons, wearing contrasting masks of black and white: the song alludes to creation myths, of encroaching darkness and light as the performers’ bodies are transformed from human into lithe, liminal creatures. The human body itself is the puppet now, the music the strings or rods, the musicians equally caught in the maelstrom. And while it is the music that drives the production, the physical contortions transform the songs into an almost ritualistic fever dream,

There is nothing as simplistic as a plot – themes of alienation, exoticism and vague threat rise up and are submerged: the finale only feels like a pause in a production that is the life of the troubadour. A battle for power seems to provoke the musicians, yet the Moon family cohere and confront the audience with another way of being.

Four stars