image001

A dizzy­ing phys­i­cal poem of the­atre, dance, and stage­craft, Red Leap’s Dust Pil­grim comes at you with intrigu­ing imme­di­a­cy and lingers like an inge­nious, puz­zling dream.

Devised by the com­pa­ny and direct­ed by found­ing mem­bers Kate Park­er and Julie Nolan, the show takes audi­ences on the jour­ney of Panue­lo, a girl whose arrival fore­shad­owed the dis­ap­pear­ance of water and vital­i­ty from her world. Adrift in a sea of dust and yoked to mys­te­ri­ous machin­ery of dan­gling ropes and tick­ing clocks, she plots to escape a moth­er who hates her for dri­ving her father away. But the fur­ther Panue­lo gets from home, the more the past seems to echo back at her.

Play­ing out with a thirst for nov­el­ty and an ener­getic dis­re­gard for still­ness, the show’s quest-nar­ra­tive neat­ly expands famil­ial strife into a pil­grim’s progress through the stra­ta of a beguil­ing fan­ta­sy soci­ety. This plays out through sparse spo­ken seg­ments, ener­getic phys­i­cal set-pieces, and some inge­nious pup­petry and cos­tume-work.

With the sto­ry com­fort­ably rest­ing on Ella Becroft’s Panue­lo, Ali­son Bruce and Thomas Eason look to have plen­ty of fun enliven­ing a series of tropey riffs on parental arche­types. Char­ac­ters don’t tend to out­stay their wel­come, and the kooky for­eign-ness of the fan­ta­sy world treads a keen bal­ance between cir­cus fas­ci­na­tion and carnie com­e­dy.

Com­ing at the end of a suc­cess­ful North Island tour for the pro­duc­tion, Dust Pil­grim plays the Te Whaea the­atre until the 9th of July.