Sound Machine's cabinet of curiosities

With "Sound Machine," Zurich-based Company Drift blended cabaret acts into the workings of a mad scientist's laboratory.  Performers Béatrice Jaccard, Massimo Bertinelli, François Gendre produced uncanny noises and clever imagery from an unlikely collection of oddities, offering the audience a scintellating array of sensory delights.

Three tables were each one arrayed with a selection of bizarre objects.  Five glass jars contained colourful specimens -- mushrooms, peanuts, a tomato, tiny organge peppers, and something almost translucent that later turned out to be a fish. Next to these was the gorgeous, interrogative curve of a gramonphone. Held near this listening ear, mute objects became things of wonder, emitting unearthly noises --  like thrumming electrical wires, a chorus of chirping atoms, or an acoustic snowstorm.  It was a delightful juxtaposition of absudity and grace.

Two more tables to the left and right held laptops and small keyboards, used by performers to "note" their observations. A pair of wouldbe virtual-reality gauntlets (jury-rigged out of workers leather gloves) sprouted wires in all directions. A small footstool held an accordion, while a barstool supported a vigorous profusion of greenary.

These are the working parts of the machine, which the performers used to build dreamy aternate reality that was part soundscape part visual collage.  When Béatrice Jaccard played her keyboard, the projection screen showed a fantastical variation -- a woman dressed not in a labcoat, but in a red velvet gown, seated before an enormous candle-bedecked organ.  When Massimo Bertinelli stuck his camera-wired headlamp into the potted plant, what popped onscreen was the image of two frail pixie-like creatures trembling under the green leaves. 

Company Drift devotes itself the surreal and the dadaesque.  With this work, their collective deft wit and humour were apparent. When Jaccard dropped a drink tablet into a glass of water listened, the audience is treated to the fizzy crackle coming out her other ear.  When the dead fish was examined by Jaccard, an image of a sad faced Gendre appears on screen holding the same fish like a puppet.

Throughout the show, all three performers sang, building textured rhythms and rambunctous melodies out of sounds that emerged from their "experiments." 

For all it's non-verbal, imagistic style, "Sound Machine" was well-structured and built towards a clear emotional peak. In a creative frenzy, the actors tried to outperform each other, and each tableau was richer and stranger than the last. As the evening reached its climax, they the room was filled with choral music and heavy ceder incense, and they began to play absurdist games with fire.  What had started as a clever game seemed to suddely have very high stakes.

Like the 19th century cabinet of curiosities, "Sound Machine" is meant to delight and surprise, and for the most part it did.  I was a little disapointed in the calabre of dance they offered, but understood as a theatrical spectacle this was a wonderful piece that invited audience to take a leap of faith, abandoning reality for the outer limits of imagination.