A man lies down on a baker's kneading board, using the dough as a pillow. He dusts himself with flour as if expecting to be kneaded into another form, a new identity. Then in a flash he somersaults up a rope and hangs suspended in space, slowly twisting as the flour tumbles from his body like falling snow.
Christmas card moments like this are a feature of John Paul Zaccarini's solo show, a teasing hybrid of circus, cabaret, performance art and dance, but that is not to say there isn't something tough beneath the shimmering wit of this likable, tongue-in-cheek act, seen at the London international mime festival.
Down from the rope, Zaccarini plunges his hands into the heart of the dough, its surface yielding to reveal a bloody centre. It makes you think of inert carcasses in an abattoir. Zaccarini's hands are stained scarlet. He is Cain, Lady Macbeth and his own executioner rolled into one.
Then something magical happens. It begins to rain and water has seeped over the floor of the stage, turning it into a small lake. The ripples and reflections of the water play against the white backcloth. Zaccarini plunges his hands into the water. He slips and slides across it, sometimes floundering like a fish and sometimes almost skating. When he catches sight of his reflection, he stares in wonder like a latter-day Narcissus entranced by a vision of himself. It is as if he is saying: "So, this is what I am."
What is Throat about? The things you dare not say, male identity, the difference between sex, love, and the yearning to be loved. It is all these things and perhaps more, wrapped up in a camp, cheeky, sexy and passionately erotic format that has all the hallmarks of a wet dream.
Zaccarini, a gifted mimic as well as a fabulous physical performer, enjoys himself no end and whips the audience up into a minor frenzy with a peacock display of sexual confidence. He does a particularly witty version of the come-on in which his sly winks and come-hither glances gradually metamorphose into a nervous tic. But although he tries on identities like suits, shaping himself, like dough, into the sexual predator, the carefree good time boy and the slinky vamp, he remains elusive.
At the end he hangs on the rope above us, his hands playing over his body and the light glinting on his torso, over which the water cascades like a waterfall. He twists slowly round and round, like Icarus caught between heaven and earth, out of reach and beyond help. He is a small, lonely figure - beautiful, abandoned, spent and completely human.
