Chiflón: The Silence of the Coal

Puppetry company Silencio Blanco drew on a short story by Baldomero Lillo to create a stark show portraying the plight of Chilean miners. Knowledge of the story should perhaps be a prerequisite for watching the show, since unfortunately it was often difficult to discern exactly what was going on. The puppets were intricate, and the lighting and movement was ocassionally impressive, but the wordless performance and an incredibly slow pace meant that the mind wandered in the absence of stimulating plot or creative invention. We needed more going on on stage to get emotionally involved in or more striking visuals to spark the imagination. The performance could have been a sad, moving mini show of some kind but Chiflón simply didn’t feel like a complete Festival piece.

Studio Theatre, Brighton Dome, 13 May 2016

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