Ingenious and magical

DAY

Funny, magical and touching, there is a lot of beauty in the show The Storyville Mosquito, by Kid Koala . The audience rose in one block at the end of the first performance at Le Diamant, blown away by what they had just seen.

On display one last time, Friday night, in Robert Lepage's theatre, The Storyville Mosquitois a multidisciplinary show with puppets, cinema and musicians. A superb object filled with ingenuity and humanity.

The story is very simple. It is that of a mosquito, a musician, who decides to leave his small town with the dream of succeeding and playing at Villa's Music Hall. A dream strewn with obstacles.

On stage, a team films the work of the puppeteers who gravitate around models and miniature sets to create this story which, like a feature film, takes shape on a big screen. The DJ and musician Kid Koala and a string trio deliver, live, the soundtrack of this film without dialogue. They are 15 on the boards.

A creation aimed at ages 5 and up, The Storyville Mosquito is not necessarily a show for children. Like Tintin, it is for ages 7 to 77. 

A small team, set back, edits the images. On the screen, we are entitled to a panoply of shots; close-ups and others where we see the puppets of all kinds of sizes. We see the creative work on stage and the finished product at the same time.

Nods to Quebec

Kid Koala and his team touch on a panoply of emotions throughout the 80 min of this very entertaining creation. We laugh, we are touched and moved, when the young mosquito encounters pitfalls. The more the show progresses, the more the emotional frame thickens, without ever being heavy. 

Kid Koala and the string trio provide great musical moments. Piano, guitar, flute, turntables, violins and cello. A mix of jazz, classical, post-rock and DJ sounds. 

The vibraphone segment, during the audition at Villa's Music Hall, is in the very solid and loud ingenious with puppets and musicians. Just like the one with Kid Koala on the piano in a scene between the young mosquito and Katy, his lover. 

Kid Koala has the good idea of ​​inserting funny little winks in each city. Without revealing these elements, those concerning Quebec, accompanied by several writings in French, were well chosen and made people laugh.

At the end of the performance, when the word “fin ” appeared on the screen, the audience rose to their feet to give a loud ovation, while the presentation of the credits was shot on stage. It is often said that the public has easy ovations in Quebec, but there, it was totally deserved. What we had just seen was brilliant.