Photo by Majasc Mikha Wajnrych

The Great He-Goat by Mossoux Bonté – The Place, London

Mossoux-Bonté’s two nights at The Place as part of the London International Mime Festival 2023 are sold out, which suggests connoisseurs of boundary-hopping Belgian physical theatre know what they are doing, because this company is astonishing. The show is set in the Black Goya gallery in the Prado Museum, Madrid. The cast as dressed as gallery attendants, and move together a group while becoming gradually infected by the demonic presence of Goya’s terrifying pictures. The show is a cavalcade of imagery bound together by fluid movement, dance and puppetry that combine to create an experience almost unlike anything else. The tableaux follow fast upon one another – the gallery staff beating a collective rhythm with the short sticks they carry, a young girl wielding flags and religious objects, the staff becoming more dishevelled, removing their uniform shirts to slap the floor in unison. They morph into Goya pictures – The Seductress who, disturbingly, is a man in a black veil, The Pilgrimage and, finally, the Witches Sabbath. The show climaxes with an attendant donning a pair of cardboard Satanic horns.

The other thing is the puppetry, which adds a remarkable level of weirdness to the experience. Attendants move around the stage in groups of three, and it takes a long moment to realise that only two of them are human. The realism of the life-size puppets they manipulate with exceptional skill is enhanced lower face masks that also partly immobilise the faces of cast members. Using ingenious concealment with dark clothing, puppet limbs and other body parts are used to create the illusion of levitation and apparently impossible movement.

The Great He-Goat is inspiring and totally absorbing, reminding us if we needed it that Northern Europe, and Belgium is particular, has a vibrant performance culture that inhabits a parallel world to British text-based theatre (with honourable exceptions, not least Lost Dog). We really could do with more of what their best companies have to offer. Two nights is not enough.