15 May 2006 Written by Andrew Eglinton Print This Post  Email This Post

From the 4th to the 7th of May the French performance company Royal de Luxe will be performing their massive scale free theatre show called The Sultan’s Elephant in central London. The performance beagan on Thursday with a rocket that landed in Waterloo Place (see pics here) and will continue with a series of events that tell the following story:

“Once upon a time, there lived a sultan who was tormented in his dreams by visions of a little girl who was travelling through time. This is his story, incredible but true.

The sultan could no longer sleep, his growing anguish diverting his attention from affairs of state. In order to cure his sickness, and believing that he would find the girl in the land of dreams, he commissioned an unknown engineer living in 1900 to construct a time-travelling elephant. A few months later, the sultan set off with his court in search of the little giant, which, in the course of his nightmares, had been transformed into a marionette 5 metres high.

The trip was awful, but they found a series of clues as to her wherabouts. The giant loved sewing - she liked to stitch cars to the tarmac, boats to quaysides, trains to railway tracks and sometimes even envelopes to letterboxes.

The elephant followed the trail left by the puppeteers. And as in all love stories, strange things began to happen. Such was his happiness at getting closer to her, he began to expel hundreds of living birds which disappeared into the sky in a burst of joy.”

I will try and join part of the show tomorrow and hopefully have some images of what is looking to be a really amazing piece of street theatre. Would love to hear from anyone who saw part of it, reactions, images, memories etc…