EU Contemporary Puppetry
Review of Robert Miles at Edinburgh Fringe
Robert may advertise himself as a Comedian, but his work sits more comfortably in the tradition of outsider art or British eccentricity, with his puppet Cyril the Squirrel, who, in Miles’ show, is frequently hilarious, chaotic and charming, it appears beyond the simple binary of good and bad as Miles is unique and takes on the character comedy, ventriloquism, patter and improvisation, battering them all into the ground through relentless, joycean stream of consciousness.
Against increasingly slick production of generic fringe performances, Miles’ unique. He begins with brief banter then brings out Cyril. Cyril is outrageous. Miles changes into a Comedy outfit, an inefficient police officers chasing a chicken before Cyril fights the chicken.
The ventriloquist’s antagonistic relationship with the dummy is Briefly visited but Cyril operates mostly as an expression of Miles’ id; anarchic and hampered only by the limitations of puppeteer’s arm. Although Miles’ Style evokes the classic comedians of the 1970’s, the humour is filtered through his wandering imagination. It destroys cliche, expectations and the barrier between audience and performer. If some puppeteer’s project onto the marionette, or use the dummy as a barrier between themselves in the audience, Miles extends himself into the puppet, feeling the pressure of his own consciousness with in his furry friend. Like a Photograph of a photograph, a simulacra of a fringe show; Robert Miles is a show that is an incredible experience that is a reminder that puppetry does not need to be crafted to be astonishing.
