Perfectly suited to the new outdoor stage of MultiStory, Rituel, from Matsena Productions, is a captivating journey through the ebullience of childhood and into the clumsiness of adolescence. It’s devised and performed by Shane David-Joseph, Johnny Hail, Charlie Layburn, and Anthony and Kel Matsena, with the last two leading the creative process.
After casually welcoming a drifting audience that filter in and orders drinks to their bubbled seats – this is no ordinary Edinburgh fringe – the cast ripple into action. Performing as toddlers who subsequently grow into young men, they race from playground antics to puberty and drunken misadventures with boyish flair.
Hail neatly weaves live guitar in and out of the story. No single performer takes the limelight, each instead illuminating a particular experience from growing up. Highlights include body-popping depictions of childhood toys, and a tortuous sex-ed video with embarrassingly “hip” rapping. All buttressed by snappy dialogue and half-mumbled asides, reminiscent of the quick-fire exchange of a Marvel movie.
There are veins of darkness, though. Stern voices – projected by the performers – assert that men don’t make florid, dance-like gestures. As Rituel moves from play-shooting robbers to an imagined brutal classroom attack, violence lies close: not under the skin, but something that is cultivated in the wrong environment.
These darker moments enrich rather than dampen Rituel. There is a maturity in the work’s frivolity, an inevitability in the dance between teenage experimentation and danger. The ending is more reflective pause than climactic conclusion, but is the stronger for it.
At times I wished the synchronous movements were tighter, and the more expressive sequences were allowed to breathe across the stage. But it is the performers’ gleeful immersion in these younger selves that provide the glue in Rituel. I almost wanted to return to those formative years. Almost.
Rituel is at MultiStory, Edinburgh, until 21 August.
