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Robert Miles
Robert Miles
theSpace, run ended
by Gareth K Vile
Robert Miles may advertise himself as a comedian, but his work sits more comfortably in the tradition of outsider art or British eccentricity. With his puppet Cyril the Squirrel – who has been called roadkill by Nina Conti – Miles’ show is frequently incoherent, hilarious, chaotic and charming. It appears beyond the simple binaries of good and bad, as Miles takes on character comedy, ventriloquism, patter and improvisation, battering them all into the ground through a relentless, Joycean stream-of-consciousness.
Against the increasingly slick production of generic Fringe performances, Miles is unique. He begins with brief banter, then brings out Cyril. Cyril is outrageous, and is put away. Miles changes into a comedy character outfit – an inefficient police inspector chasing a chicken – before getting Cyril out again. Then Cyril fights the chicken. Then Cyril sings some Elvis, with audience help. Finally, Cyril teaches the audience some martial arts. This sequence, however, is open to variation, depending on Miles’ attention. He does seem to get rather upset about the lack of fire extinguishers in the room at times.
The ventriloquist’s antagonistic relationship with the dummy is briefly visited, but Cyril operates mostly as an expression of Miles’ id: anarchic, a bit rude but not too vulgar, and hampered only by the limitations of the puppeteer’s arm. Although Miles’ style evokes the classic comedians of the 1970s, the humour is filtered through his wandering imagination. It destroys cliches, expectations, the barrier between audience and performer. If some puppeteers project onto the marionette, or use the dummy as a barrier between themselves and the audience, Miles extends himself into the puppet, feeling the pressure of his own consciousness within his furry friend. Like a photograph of a photograph, a simulacra of a Fringe show, Robert Miles is a show that is an incredible experience that is a reminder that puppetry does not need to be crafted to be astonishing.
