Review: Zoo

Zoo Smock Alley Theatre HHH

We are warned from the start, by Teatro de Chile, that nothing on stage is to be trusted. Even so, their lecture-cum-performance piece slyly chips away at the expectations it sets up. Director Manuela Infante and a cast of five from the company have devised a deceptive work that delivers its serious points about cultural imperialism and the limits of knowledge with a light touch.

As two earnest Chilean scientists introduce their discovery of the last two survivors of a nomadic tribe thought to be extinct, they initially come across as figures of fun, in a parody of the conventions of the academic lecture format. When they present the two living specimens of the “Tzoolkman” people on stage, they begin to seem considerably less benign. Using videos of a series of experiments they conduct on the two tribesmen, suggestions of eugenics and even torture are introduced.

Wearing black-and-white striped shirts and motorbike helmets, murmuring and gesticulating abruptly, the two tribesmen brilliantly perform their assigned roles as noble savages. In a double-act that deftly combines clownish physical routines and poignant incomprehension, they attempt to recreate their own habitat on stage. At one point, they create an intricate cat’s cradle with ropes and knots, in which one of the scientists is caught – a nicely metaphorical image.

Whether the two researchers are sinister in motive or merely misguided is an open question, but one that becomes irrelevant. As the play progresses, they elaborate on their rejection of the objective pursuit of knowledge in favour of an animistic immersion in the world, which they attribute to their two human specimens. It is clear that they have overidentified with their subjects, to say the least. An obvious idea, perhaps, but this inventive company takes it to absurd, intriguing lengths, resulting in a philosophical parable that is also an elaborate gag. Ends Sep 28