And Then He Ate Me @ Traverse
Strange, fantastical and dark, And Then He Ate Me is a fairytale for the stage that bites back. Created by the award-winning French company Velo Theatre, this piece roars and howls as the passing of time, memories and an eternal hunger gnaw away at the occupants of a small house in a forest of black pine trees.
As always with fables, the Big Bad Wolf – or is it a Wolfman? – is ever present as his part man, part beast (Charlot Lemoine) becomes both antihero and narrator; reliving his conquests, his battles and his insatiable desires alone. Except this wolf isn’t alone, he’s aided – or is it hindered? – by a familiar rabbit (Jose Lopez) from Wonderland.
And Then He Ate Me begins where fairytales end and nightmares commence, and is an exceptional fantasy that features elements from other fairytales, including The Three Little Pigs, Alice in Wonderland, Peter and the Wolf and most notably, Little Red Riding Hood. Peppered with moments of emotion and comedy, Lemoine, Lopez and Tania Castaing (the doomed girl in red) remind us of the childhood fears we once thought long dead. The strength of this fantastical production lies in its ability to take universal stories and render them almost unrecognisable by using darkness, memory, pain and desire. We all remember fearing The Big Bad Wolves of our childhood, the thoughts that kept us awake at night, but as Velo Theatre remind us, they never really left, they just grew up with us.