A simple white table with a red gingham tablecloth announces that the serving tonight, at Downstage, will involve a 10 minute appetiser before the 50 minute main.  The laughs are fast and ready in the first Act because seriously, this guy – as a waiter setting the table – can bust a move. 

After a brief set-change it’s onto the main act – Moving Stationery – which operates on the premise that while stationery is cool (generations of teenage girls for eons can vouch for this), shifting it around on a desk in an office while undertaking meaningless repetitive tasks day in and day out is most definitely, not cool.

Obviously a lot of work has gone into devising this work which makes a ceremony of the inane.  As anyone who has spent time ‘pushing paper’ there are things done to pass time and this work captures that.  Who knew a helium filled balloon attached to a teabag had physical limitations unless it had been tried and tested.  All action is purposeful and it feels like this has been worked on to give the impression of not-being-worked on.  Clever.

That it’s had time to develop and breathe since it debuted in 2012 is evident though it could benefit from more. I found my attention waning in parts even in spite of the generosity afforded towards the audience (but then isn’t that true of sitting in an office environment without the distraction of a computer and internet connection).  I couldn’t even be distracted by the fact that the performer, Thom Monckton, uses every single part of his body in the performance, even his hair. Yes, even his hair!

Did I mention it’s all mimed? Combined with his physicality and tendency towards over exaggerated facials he reminds me a little of Mr Bean.  But this is Mr Bean unplugged.  There is nowhere to hide on a theatre stage.  As is the case, whenever I watch anything involving Mr Bean I find myself bracing for the cringe and the kind of unpredictability that this type of comedy/clowning relies on. While there are moments it could catapult down that pathway, it doesn’t. I like how it doesn’t fall into ‘then there’s this-and-this-and-this’, as one gag after another eclipses the one beforehand.

He most definitely earns the rapturous applause he gets after one particularly impressive and surprising physical act that unravels and evokes wow.  Skinny white guys take note.  For want of a cliché, this will get you the girl. 

The soundtrack is great, enhancing the performance and at one stage I marvel at how perfectly co-ordinated it is with the action.  How does a performance without words stay on time? 

Anyone who has spent time watching a clock tick agonisingly, torturously slowly, while trapped within four walls will relate to Moving Stationery. In fact, anyone who hasn’t (if the kids chortling throughout the performance is anything to go by) will as well. It’s whānau-friendly and while it won’t exactly set-you-on fire, I guarantee it will leave you in awe of the abilities of Thom Monckton: dancer, mime artist, contortionist, gymnast, clown and artiste. What’s next?   

[Note: This very brief season played only three performances over two day.] 

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It’s about the simplest plotline I can recall in anything I’ve seen: Man goes to work, has a snack and stuffs an envelope.  Yet somehow, through the distinctively undignified medium of clown, it manages to take almost three quarters of an hour to reach the charming, if anti-climactic twist. 

The ostensible love-child of Mr Bean and Stephen Merchant, Thom Monckton’s awkward, scrawny, sweaty, bespectacled, pen-pushing office clerk is the sort of fellow you might cross the street to avoid were he not so genuinely naive and unthreatening. 

After some introductory business involving his mind being blown by the fact his cardy matches the wallpaper patch on the lift’s rear wall, our hapless hero gets to his office for a busy day’s fail. 

Both playfully and painstakingly constructing a coffee table from his stack of clerical boxes, he seats himself for a little tea and sushi.  The relatively elegant solution to getting his teabag into the hot water elicits the first of a number of bursts of supportive applause from the sympathetic audience. 

The character’s unassuming bookishness belies Monckton’s exemplary skill in acrobatics, mime and robot dancing, but the real genius lies in his ability to make the simplest of everyday tasks look all but insurmountably difficult, so that when he finally achieves a task so mundane as sealing an envelope, we are genuinely relieved and proud for him. 

He makes making doing easy things look hard look easy.

Basically, if you’re a fan of classic clown, this is the real thing, as attested by Kallo Collective’s online teaser. 

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Anyone who has ever battled with a dispenserless roll of cellotape knows about the treacherous nature of desk equipment and will sympathise with the travail of Sigmund, created and performed by Thom Monckton.

Poor chap, he is bound to end in exhausted tangles from the sequence in the lift, taking him to his new office job. Attempts to catch the strings of his tie-on headgear see him already overheated before he even tries to make a cup of tea, consume his sushi or retrieve a pen.

Anxious, angular and wordless, he engages with furniture and objects in a series of mildly humorous encounters in which he is always the loser. In the manner of a true clown, he never gives up, but continues the struggle, sometimes stuck to objects, sometimes contorted in impossible positions, until he eventually exults in the freedom of tossing paperwork into the air.

The idea is an appealing one and although many of Sigmund’s predicaments come about because he initiates a quirky action, such as fixing his tea bag to the dangling string of his smiley (mocking ?) welcome balloon, we can accept the basic proposition that objects meant to help us in a straightforward way can be perversely obstructive.   

Concentrated energy, an extraordinarily flexible body and a mobile, expressive face are features of the performance. While never uproariously funny, it does sustain momentum as well as developing a tentative narrative and the audience was both interested and responsive.  

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Raised in Patea and trained in Paris(L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq) via CircoArts in Christchurch, Thom Monckton devised his almost oxymoronically entitled Moving Stationery inFinland. As a silent clown he is a joy to behold.

His impeccable finger-sync piano playing, which we first saw in Members Of Our Limbs (December 2010), is simply an intro as we take our seats, as are his antics with a notice board displaying the count down to the starting time.

The substantive show captures the torpor of a lonely desk job, where a cup of tea is the highlight of the day. Basically he brings four file boxes up in a lift, unpacks them, makes his tea then discovers and urgent report that needs completing …

What makes this show brilliant is the wackily imaginative way he goes about it, and his extraordinary physical dexterity (his body locking and popping moves could win competitions if he went that way), not to mention the physics lesson implicit in his teabag dunking.

Every bit of his costume is exploited to comic effect. A past success has won him a helium-filled smiley-face balloon and the gift of pens, a pen-holder and Sellotape. These, along with a hat stand, desk, office chair, the boxes and their contents – including some sushi and a tube of wasabi paste – become characters in their own right, as the simplest tasks become complex and blossom into wondrous routines.  

Of course he comes to a reel sticky end and reality bites in the shape of that urgent report. But wait – there’s more …! Don’t miss it.   

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