Harlequin Goes to the Moon - Rude Mechanical Theatre Company

Thursday 1^st August 2013. Outdoor theatre was made for evenings like this. How often does it happen, in England, that you don’t need to put on a coat or wrap yourself up in a blanket even after the interval, when the sun has gone down?

I chose a good night to go and see the Rude Mechanicals perform their latest play Harlequin Goes to the Moon.

This was the second piece of theatre I’ve seen recently that was about love, loss, and travelling into space. (See also Something Very Far Away at the Unicorn Theatre). The idea of travelling far away to find what is lost was central to both pieces. It’s an effective theme; implicitly connecting the personal with the universal.

In Harlequin Goes to the Moon, the character of Paglia believes that all the lost things are kept in bottles on the moon. His idea is dismissed by others, but this hopeful little play suggests that lost things can be rediscovered. Characters who seemed beyond hope find a way to be happy in the world. And yet there is also the poignant acknowledgement that not everyone can get what they want. Some things remain out of reach, on the moon.

A few years ago, I was at a music festival, and there was a ‘tree of lost things’ on the site. On paper tags, people wrote down what they had lost (some literal, some philosophical), and tied them to the tree. These tags became like leaves on the tree, and it remains one of my most vivid memories of the festival.

In the programme for Harlequin Goes to the Moon, the audience is encouraged to do something similar. We’re asked to write what we have lost on a slip of paper and put it into one of the bottles that hang from the trees on the stage.

I must admit, I didn’t see anyone doing this from where I was sitting, but it was an invitation that tied in with the Rude Mechanicals’ idea of community. Beyond the audience interactions and the cast improvising around local distractions (eg. being upstaged by a cat wandering across the set), the Rude Mechanicals seem to work hard to build relationships with their audiences and with the communities they visit.

Another note in the programme tells us that the company doesn’t search for venues by thinking “this would be a good place to have a show”. Rather, they start by thinking who the audience will be and which venue would be best for that audience. They say: “What matters is that it is where that community meet and do things.”

It’s rather strange to think of a group of commedia dell’arte inspired actor-musicians performing in a modern recreation ground in the south of England. And yet apparently it works for the Rude Mechanicals.

As with The Pantaloons and Little Bulb, the Rude Mechanicals ask a lot from their actors. And they’re a multi-talented bunch: acting, singing, playing instruments, improvising about cats... Even the stage manager has a speaking/playing part in this piece.

So I’m glad that the sun has been shining more than usual this summer. Hopefully it means that more people will get a chance to see them.

The Rude Mechanicals are on tour until August 11^th so catch them while you can! http://www.therudemechanicaltheatre.co.uk/