REVIEW: EASTERN PROMISE FESTIVAL – Pauline and the Matches
If gold medals were awarded for sheer eccentricity then the collective behind Pauline and the Matches would be world-beaters.
A group of multi-media performance and sound artists create a performance and installation based on Heinrich Hoffman’s cautionary tales, Hoffman best known for his work Der Struwwelpeter (Shockheaded Peter) demonstrating the disastrous consequences of children’s misbehaviour. This work appears to be based on Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug (The Dreadful Story of the Matches), a little girl plays with matches and burns to death.
Giant matches, drawing lots to squash tiny straw doll Pauline’s, walking spotlights, cigarette smoking legs, tinfoil blanketed screaming and drumming women, a bicycle-driven panoply of instruments and a man with a shed-load of cassette tapes, are only a small sampling of what’s on offer.
Chaos abounds and the main presenter of the work (who looks as if she’d rather be anywhere else than here) appears not to have a full grasp of what she’s meant to be doing.
Amusing for all the wrong reasons.
