Gomaar Trilogy

Teenage kicks can be pretty painful, even when they're delivered by a legless puppet. Belgian company Ultima Thule replicates all the agonies of adolescence using a huge cast of life-size papier mâché torsos, ready to evoke the story of 16-year-old Gomaar's entrance into the bustling world of 1960s big city life.

This performance is the second in a trilogy that tells his whole life story: this middle period covers an awkward coming-of-age as he escapes the farm he grew up on after discovering that he's illegitimate. City students tease him for being a country bumpkin, but accept him all the same. The stage is clouded with smoke to create their swinging jazz parties, where even what you drink is a fiercely political choice, and free love is more than just a catchphrase. Appropriately, Wim DeWulf's witty text is loving, but not sentimental.

He freely skewers the hypocrasies of Gomaar's new friends, more likely to join their fathers' law offices than to blockade the Paris streets. The cast (Els Trio, Kurt Defrancq and Sven Ronsijn) create their world using large concrete bricks as monoliths, stepping stones and sculptures, moving them and toppling them in a thick layer of haze.

The puppets they manipulate are wonderfully expressive, with a kind of mournful kindness massaged into their papery faces. The actors that voice them are often less clear, occasionally stumbling over the translated text. But the emotional intelligence of DeWulf's text shines through, bringing back faded teenage traumas with vivid compassion.