Type: Feline Comedy, Festival, Absurdist
If You Liked: Hot Department, Elf Lyon, Garry Starr
What happens when you usher thirty to forty people into a small room and let loose a scaredy-cat for sixty minutes? For a whole evening, Natalia Sledz had the audience convinced she has many a purring bone in her body during her fantastic clowning-character-comedy act Puss Puss.
Sledz makes ample use of the props and material available to her on stage – she emerges and unemerges from packaging boxes, gets adequately tangled up in a ball of yarn, runs behind the curtain into a clatter of what one presumes is pots and pans – but she also spends an equal amount of time ‘outside’ the traditional stage, as any self-respecting feline creature would do. Bringing a generous amount of physicality to her act, Puss Puss climbs across and on top of chairs, lunges into and out of the arms of unsuspecting audience members, and scampers in and out of areas with pace.
Sledz is a skilful clown. Her movements are precise, and her facial expressions controlled. In the beginning there is all the tentativeness of a cat who suddenly discovers a room full of people, does not know who to trust, and is simply afraid of the water spray. Being wordless as a clown and moving the act along with or without the help of a crowd is a challenge in itself, let alone being a cat while at it, but that’s where the eyes and the minute facial expressions play a role, and Natalia deployed them masterfully. Her reactions were sharp and her movements deliberate as she used space and time deftly. As a result, the audience was completely drawn in, and eventually Puss Puss did find some favourites in the crowd she kept going back to, and they happily obliged.
A controlled chaos lay throughout the act interspersed by moments of quiet, when the room waited with bated breath to see what mischief Puss Puss would get up to next. It was a mark of her success at audience engagement when Sledz was able to get members of the audience to work together and lure Puss Puss towards wearing the cone of shame. You could hear whispers from the back, and tips being thrown in between, no doubt from experienced cat owners. Natalia responded to this crowd energy effectively whilst continuing to keep them guessing about her next outrageous act.
In the final segment, we watch Puss Puss encounter her fear of water – with a bit of support from the audience – which is a lovely end to a show that started with her jumping out of her skin at the sight of a room full of people. Has Puss Puss finally made a friend she can trust to face her fears with? One wonders.
See our other reviews from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in the link below
Tickets and Practical Info for Puss Puss at MICF 🎟️
Tickets: https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/puss-puss/
Ticket Prices: $16.88 – $31.23
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: The Motley Wherehaus – Vault 1
Duration: 60 minutes
Strictly for audiences 15+: Audience participation, Drug references
