Macunaíma

Macunaíma, from the Dende Collective, is showing as part of the ‘Lyric Firsts’ season. Adapted from a founding text of Brazilian modernism, this work-in-progress is centrally concerned with cultural cannibalism, linguistic anarchism, and the social playfulness necessary to negotiate persistent mythic archetypes in an alarmingly primitive modern world.

Mário de Andrade’s epic tale follows the picaresque adventures of its eponymous “hero without a character” whose amorphous, amoral nature soaks up and reflects the different creatures and situations he encounters. He’s a childlike, foul-mouthed, sexually-voracious, innocent chameleon, whose wide-eyed wonder at the monsters of the Brazilian forest is matched by his incomprehension at the negotiable niceties of a smart, intellectual dinner-party.

The Dende Collective uses physicality, multi-lingual storytelling and puppetry to follow the shifting registers of Andrade’s avant-garde text. This vigorous, vibrant, culturally-diverse ensemble seem happiest at the mythic end of the narrative spectrum, revelling in their collective play amidst richly imagined jungle landscapes, filled with wild beasts, gaudily feathered birds, and cut-out silver stars. A massive, malevolent cobra makes a sinuous, sinister entrance, and phallus-fondling flesh-eater Currupira is a marvellous, half-human, half-monstrous, epicurean charmer.

The company have been working with the Little Angel, and it shows in some detailed, touching puppetry, especially the tiny child whose death draws a note of genuine grief out of Macunaíma’s carnivalesque chaos. More conventionally realistic segments are less successful: the framing device of a dinner party celebrating Modern Art Week is explained at some length, and to little dramatic effect. It’s when the frocks come off, and the forest invades the dining-room, that this wild, tough, wandering story really comes to life.

The show in its current form covers roughly half of Macunaíma’s adventures, with a cliff-hanging ending that leaves you longing to know more. So this is definitely one to watch out for in the future, a face-stuffing feast of polyphonic fantasy, post-colonial farce, and riotous, rumbustious imagining.