2 November
Hitchcock meets Spaghetti Western in this multi award-winning, intercontinental, inter-genre, cinematic caper of accusations, accidents and accents. Raucously funny and endlessly inventive, Lecoq-trained company Voloz Collective delight and stun with live original music and virtuosic acrobatics in this fast-paced whodunnit. After a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe, Voloz Collective brings their smash hit to The North Wall for one night only.
Roger, a Frenchman in 1960’s New York, has followed the same routine for years, until a minor delay saves him from an explosion. Throwing his ordered world into chaos, Roger chases his would-be assassins around the globe. Winner of the Carol Tambour Incentive Award, The Les Enfants Terribles and Greenwich Partnership Award, and Playbill’s “Pick of the Fringe” The Man Who Thought He Knew Too Much is fast-paced, immediate and visceral, igniting the audiences’ imaginations with a whirlwind of images and sounds. The minimalist physical style of Voloz Collective makes the show accessible for people aged 6 to 106.
The physicality and movement of different sections of The Man Who are influenced by different cinematic styles. Opening with a film-noir-esque feel, the structure then transitions into the fast-paced physicality of a Matrix or Bond film, before seeing influences from classic and contemporary westerns, including the films of the Coen Brothers and Sergio Leone. For film buffs, the visual storytelling of Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino is evident throughout.
Although set in the 1960s, The Man Who toys with historical truths by subtly inserting fictional characters into actual historical events, including classic American advertising campaigns, cold war conspiracies, and even a Beatles song.
Voloz Collective comments, While comedy today is increasingly text-based, we are excited to bring audiences to the roots of vaudevillian physical comedy with Voloz’s own contemporary cinematic twist. What draws people so often to film and TV is the speed and ingenuity with which one image transforms into the next. With this show, we transpose this visual dexterity of
film into a theatrical language, teasing out moments of poetry and hilarity at breakneck speed!
Performance Dates Thursday November 2nd, 8pm
Running Time 70 minutes
Location The North Wall, South Parade, Oxford OX2 7JN, UK
Co-written, co-produced, directed and performed by Paul Lofferon
Emily Wheatman
Sam Rayner
Olivia Zerphy
Original Compositions and Live Music Frederick Waxman
Lighting Design Jo Underwood
Box Office Tickets are available from https://www.thenorthwall.com/
Standard: £16, Pay more: £20, Pay less: £12
Photo credit: Matthieu Ponchel
