Rude Mechanical Theatre Company revives an early hit

The Rude Mechanical Theatre Co is once again promising outdoor mirth and mayhem in the great commedia dell’arte tradition as it heads for West Sussex this summer.
Pete TalbotPete Talbot
Pete Talbot

Company founder and artistic director Pete Talbot is reviving one of the company’s earliest hits, The Comedy of Babi Babbett.

As usual, it draws on the commedia dell’arte archetypes.

Miserly widower and gold merchant Sydney Lean receives some sausages by mistake from Philomila Taureaumerde, the wife of a doctor, who with Philomila frequently comes to Lean’s house for cards. In his foolishness, Sydney assumes the sausages to be a proclamation of her affection so he writes her a love poem. He leaves the task of delivering it to his incompetent servant Babi who, of course, fails to give it to her.

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In the meantime the charlatan Captain Guarderobe is attempting to seduce both Philomila and Lean’s daughter, Isabella. Taureaumerde finds out, and all roads lead to The Golden Cockerel Chocolate House, where Fosca, in the guise of a French assassin, who has been menacingly stalking the stage with a bomb in his bag, is waiting...

As Pete says, in recent years, the company has got a little bit political with a small ‘p’, often taking on some fairly-serious themes.

“But Babi is out-and-out commedia. It’s flat-out farce. There is nothing profound about it at all.”

The company has been going for 17 years. Babi was the piece the performers did in their fourth year.

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“I just thought it would be nice to go back to it, to go back to our roots and also to offer a play that lots and lots of people won’t have seen. But also because really Babi is the core of what we do. We are a contemporary commedia dell’arte company working with communities right across the south of England in a carnivalesque tradition that goes back thousands of years, visiting annually with brand-new stories, making people laugh, moving them and being provocative, and we have a fanatical following of people who keep coming back.

“I used to be a school teacher for a long time, though I did professional theatre as well as an independent director. But I left teaching and went to Italy to train in commedia dell’arte. I used to go to America with youth theatre groups, and I saw commedia on the streets of New York. I just knew it was what I wanted to do.

“I love the tradition, and I love the physicality of it. It’s such a physical form of theatre, and it is profoundly non-naturalistic, which I like more than anything. I have never been a great believer in naturalism. You always know they are going to be actors on the stage. I would prefer just to accept the fact they are actors and to bring it out. We do white face, and that’s part of the fun. We make jokes about it, and the audiences love it. It’s a very primitive form of theatre.

“In the theatre you have got the fourth wall, which is partly created by the lighting, the fact you can’t physically see the audience, whereas outdoors with commedia we speak directly to the audience. We are out there stealing their wine.”

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This year’s West Sussex shows are: Kirdford Recreation Ground – Wednesday, June 10; West Chiltington Recreation ground – Thursday, June 11; Mannings Heath Village Green – Saturday, June 13; Halnaker Park Cottage, Halnaker – Sunday, June 28; Dial Post Village Green – Thursday, July 2; Sussex Prairies, Henfield – Sunday July 5; and Milland Recreation Ground – Thursday, August 6, all at 7.30pm; picnics from 6pm. Tickets are £13 plus concessions on 01323 501260 or online at www.therudemechanicaltheatre.co.uk.