[Revised for accurate naming, 22 March 2021]

They call themselves Kwəːk – the Quirk Collective, which is one way of suggesting we should expect the unexpected. Their show’s title, The Wild Card, is another. Sure enough we are called earlier than usual to ascend to the BATS Dome space, where we are handed a playing card with a message written on it, and invited to inspect the white boxes on stage at close quarters.

Each of four oblong boxes is adorned with the insignia of a playing card suit. Two pairs of white full-face masks hang on the side of two of the boxes and all but one feature combinations of eye makeup and lipstick; I don’t notice which suits they are attached to and realise now the choice is probably significant.

Each box contains a diorama installation. I am drawn, for example, to a tiny book on a tiny table and a quick skim reveals plaintive observations on the state of the world and humanity. A table stage left contains a range of musical instruments and a microphone.

Inspired by the book The Solitaire Mystery by the Norwegian philosopher Jostein Gaarder, then devised by Pája Neuhöferová, Leda Farrow and Katka Prazakova, The Wild Card uses mask, a hand-held puppet, shadow puppetry, dance, music, amplified voice and live sound effects to manifest the subjectively imagined story of a small boy’s quest to find his mother, who left him and his father to ‘find herself’, when he (the boy) was just four years old.

Using the masks, one on top of the next, Neuhöferová semi-dances the role of the mother, repeating poses and postures that suggest she is posing for a photographer. I feel the potential of each mask is not fully exploited. Presumably the idea is to depict a couple of the personae she is trying out for herself before the third mask becomes deathly. I’m disappointed when the fourth entirely blank – i.e. neutral – mask is not explored at all. If the thinking here is that she has become a ‘nothing’, they’ve missed the point of a neutral mask which in fact is capable of expressing everything. My hope this will be explored and exploited later in the show is not realised.

The small hand-held, loose-limbed puppet (made by Farrow) that depicts the boy is initially manipulated Neuhöferová then with Farrow. It is white and grey with black cavities for eyes, presumably to depict how he feels rather than how he might actually look. Again the puppet work falls short of its potential to express a range of emotions, moment by moment. The boy’s voice is recorded by Neuhöferová.

In the book, the boy is 12 when, years after his mother has left, he and his father set off by car through Europe, from Norway to Greece, in search of her. Here the boy travels alone by yacht, hits a storm, and is shipwrecked on a tree and bird-filled island – all well depicted with shadow puppetry (by Neuhöferová, Prazakova and Farrow) and live sfx from Daniel Dvoracek.  

Wearing a huge head mask (made by Farrow), Neuhöferová plays the Joker with a gratingly gravelly voice supplied in rhyme by Dvoracek on mic. Fun is had with a magnifying glass used as a racquet enhanced by boingy sfx. When the boy finds it – with no moment of surprise, curiosity or delight depicted – it somehow makes him capable of leaping in great bounds … And when he takes a pack of cards from his pocket, exquisitely delineated Kings prance about and shout on the lightbox screens and at each other.

Eventually Dvoracek tells us the answer lies in the cards and we are enjoined to share what is written on the Diamonds, Clubs and Hearts – to no avail. Strangely when it seems inevitable the Spades will offer a way forward, after a big build-up, he calls Clubs again. Is this a mistake? Perhaps. If not, I don’t get it – especially when I discover, post show, what the Spades message is.

The conclusion is a piece of sage advice that aligns somewhat with such questers of yore as Russian philosopher George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, except the idea of what the mother should have done is unlikely to have worked and suggests a total lack empathy for her situation. All in all, despite some well executed elements, The Wild Card leaves quite a bit to be desired.
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