Shu is a character with a box on her head.  She wants to find a friend. 

A solo clowning piece with no text is an ambitious challenge, and Arte/Visuale make a solid effort with a production that is endearing and inventive, if somewhat lacking in terms of execution and pay off. 

Developed by performer/creator Laura Gaudin from a 5 min solo first performed at Victoria University, this is a re-boot of the show’s first outing in the NZ Fringe Festival last month. Gaudin shares her daily routine and developing friendship with a Brother Deluxe 850TR Typewriter in a fifty minute exploration of loneliness and love. Offbeat and often charming, the story is built from a series of set-pieces, forming the routine of Shu’s day.

While its heart is in the right place, and many creative ideas are at play, often the pay-off does not eventuate. Energy and audience connection are issues – we are not complicit with Shu in her endeavours, rather our presence is an unexplained accident. The games that form the blocks from which the show is built are sometimes rushed and sometimes drag. There is a lot of potential, but few of the set ups are given the necessary precision of execution to actually land. 

Arte/Visuale clearly has a strong vision for the work they wish to create. The set design is excellent: cardboard boxes and screens create a strange retro world of electronics and sepia, striking the right notes of nostalgia and peculiar.  Lights and sound, operated by James Ruscoe, add to the piece –music is particularly effective at lifting the energy onstage, and a more extensive soundtrack (particularly some pre-show music to play the audience in) could help. 

On opening night a scene-stealing toddler in the front row narrates a loud commentary to the entire performance and Gaudin copes with this well, carrying her performance on without hesitation, despite salutations to “Wake UP” and loud (though generally positive) enquiries as to her motivations and purpose. The show clearly resonates with this young audience member, and I think if pushed firmly in this direction, would be very successful with young children. 

Charming, quirky work from a new company – I am interested to see what they do next.

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“A solo physical theatre piece about a box-headed character called Shu”. The opening line of the publicity material for Arte Visuale’s Fringe show in some ways makes a review of the play redundant – the show’s not really “about” anything other than performer Laura Gaudin spending forty minutes on stage with a cardboard box over her head.

This is the type of fringe theatre that either charms or exasperates its audience, and it is to Arte Visuale’s credit that Shu is not once exasperating, and is very frequently charming.

The show opens with Gaudin clambering out of a scaffold-mounted bed and descending onto a stage strewn with boxes and appliances, and it’s the relationship between her anthropomorphised box and these appliances (principally a Brother Deluxe 850TR Typewriter) that the play imagines.

It does so using mime, shadow play, an effective low-fi sound and lighting design, and an endearingly sincere performance from Gaudin. To produce a collective “aw” from an audience is no mean feat when your face has been covered by a box with two cut-out squares for eyes.

There are some great moments of humour, particularly in the dance sequences, and the audible chuckling of the children in the audience indicates that Arte Visuale could be making more of their decision to bill the show as “family friendly”.

If the point of the play’s narrative is hard to grasp (and it’s entirely possible it doesn’t have a point at all), there’s not much wrong with that. Shu is fun, entertaining, and occasionally surprising, in a good kind of way.

It’s the sort of show that answers the sceptical theatregoer’s “Why?” with a shoulder-shrugging “Why not?”, and is a fine addition to the schedule of anyone looking for a varied and eclectic Fringe experience.

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