La Compagnie du Hanneton’s latest show The Toad Knew packed the house of the Yard at Chicago Shakespeare, Chicago’s brand new theater on Navy Pier. People came to see this 90-minute captivating and morose fairy tale that blended Thierrée’s dadaesque vision with an Oscar Wilde cum Dickensian steampunk aesthetic. The entire production has a dreamlike quality, from the lush and alive seeming velvet curtain to the bizarrely anthropomorphized apparatus and rigging that expanded, shook, twirled and contracted to allow a sort of fairy spider with a heart light to descend occasionally to interact with the humans. Of course, she may have been just one of the human gang, because The Toad Knew leaves a lot up to individual interpretation, a fact which some theater-goers were visibly not at ease with. It was the show’s weakness as well as its strength. The Toad Knew’s form, both playful and dark, depended on motion to portray character, but the spongey plotline left a few audience members who were unaccustomed to this challenge of preconceptions confounded enough to wander away– which was distracting. For the rest of us, stunned in our seats, vacillating often between laughter and awe, what came across loud and clear in Thierrée’s story and performance was the perfect blend of poignancy and comedy. It was contemporary dance mingled with new magic, while integrating physical theater and circus which somehow transcended the sum of its parts—a feat that many have often tried with less success.
The music has a classical influence and was composed by Thierrée himself who is also an accomplished musician.
The standout moments of physical theater most often occurred when Thierrée leaned on tradition, taking a small clown moment and exploring it until absurdity emerged, and then taking it even further. When his hair continues to fall in his face throughout the show, he goes from using hairspray on it (and on anything within 50 yards) to trying to staple it down– and ultimately resorting to a hairband, which he manages to trap his own hands in, causing a cascade of beautiful hand action. Each move throughout the show is intricately explored like this, often to hilarious end but also sometimes exposing a manic obsessive root that smacks of humanity.
The Toad Knew plays at The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare from September 19 – 23, 2017 before moving on to Montreal’s La Tohu on September 30th-October 7th. Tickets at The Yard range from $38-$88.
This article originally appeared at Third Coast Review
This post was last modified on October 6, 2017 3:51 pm