London Theatre
The Incredible Rubber Man or Captain Frodo as he is (slightly) more conventionally known, is one of the headline acts for the hit show, La Clique at the Hippodrome, Leicester Square. Originally booked in for four months it extended the run by another two months after only four weeks - and the company recently found out that they are now continuing for a further two months on top of that - making La Clique the incredible rubber West End show, stretching to twice it’s original length!
In his act, Captain Frodo performs feats of elasticity and dislocation using ordinary household items such as metal bins and two tennis rackets. It would be a shame to spoil the impact for any of you who will go to see the show in future (and you should) but suffice to say that you will be revolted, delighted and entertained in equally generous measures.
How did you get into cabaret performance?
My father was a magician who had his own show called Santini’s Magic, he taught me his act and I was part of his show from a young age.
Did you always know you were going to be a freak artist?
No I didn't even know I was going to be a professional performer. My family lived in a fishing village in Norway, my dad and I were the only people in my world that did what we did. It wasn't until I went to university in Oslo to study philosophy that I discovered that it was so much more than the family tradition I'd known it as. I made a living on the side of my studies by performing, which is when I started to think of it as a viable living for myself.
Even then I began by doing what I'd been taught, which was magic. Although I have a natural ability to do what I do, due to what's called 'hyper-mobility syndrome' (this is caused for me by a lack of collagen in my lingaments) I didn't start off by taking advantage of this to perform. My sister could also manipulate her limbs in abnormal ways and we used to muck around with it as kids so it didn't seem so freakish to me. The way it was first harnessed for the stage was that we ordered a strait jacket from New York and put an escapology act into the magic show.
It wasn't until I saw a freak artist at Roskilde, who pretty much just presented his abnormality by itself as an act that I understood that this ability was worth watching without needing to be incorporated into something like a magic act to justify it. Robert Bogden wrote a book called ‘Freakshow', in which he said a freak is not a freak until you put him on stage and give him a name and a story and present it in a deliberate way, so even though I was born with freakish tendencies I didn't really become a freak artist until I put it together as a show.
How are you holding up after such a long run? Is it still fresh for you?
The show is still great fun to do. Obviously as a performer you have to go further into the specifics of your act to keep it fresh, really concentrate on improving the details so that you don't sink into auto-pilot, which is the danger with repetition. But with my routine a large part of it has to be improvised on the night as you have to follow where your body is going and make that into the physical comedy that my act is all about rather than impose a set routine onto it which reduces the impact. At the end of the day if you fall over on stage because you're supposed to at that exact moment then the audience knows on some level that it's a fake.
You've played in some very different environments in your time from spit & sawdust style sideshows with a punk vibe to the Edinburgh festival or the middle of tourist London, what are the differences you notice as a performer?
I find the appreciation of my shows in the more upscale, posh venues is incredible which is partly I think because my act is in such sharp relief to the surroundings, you wouldn't expect to see a man with his arms and a leg through a tennis racket in a smart concert hall. I also think people are less knowing or expectant of what I do so it can be more shocking and remarkable to them.
Have there been any remarkable interactions between performers and the audience in this run?
I still get people fainting for my act but much less than when I was doing something like The Happy Sideshow (Aussie freak-show), which although it was positive in essence really set out to shock the audience in a way that we're not aiming at with La Clique, which is more varied.
What's great is that we don't get heckled in this show, the vibe we create has such a positivity which is helped along by the natural flow we try to keep for the atmosphere. You don't feel wedged into your seats until you're told you can get up, if you want to hang out by the bar then that's cool, its meant to feel like a party rather than theatre.
What's it been like having this building as your office for the last 6 months?
Incredible. It used to be a water circus complete with an underground river, fountains, water chutes and live seals and hippopotamuses diving and swimming around in it. What was once so representative of the vaudevillian tradition is in it's present form now representative of La Clique, the venue is slightly battered and faded around the edges, a bit seedy. That's definitely part of the atmosphere we want for our shows and gives us an edge. We really feel like this is our home.
Circus and cabaret are said to be going through a renaissance in the UK at the moment. Is that's what its felt like as a performer? Why do you think that is?
As an artist whose career has been on the rise its felt like that. But I think its also happening more generally, there's an increased appetite for this sort of thing in a depression I think. The biggest boom years of the great age of circus were in the 20's and 30's during the Great Depression. Partly I think this is because we can afford to keep our ticket prices a lot lower for a cabaret than our competitors or something like opera so we stay accessible through a recession. But I also think its got something to do with the fact that cabaret breaks the fourth wall and interacts directly with the audience, its not mediated by someone's appreciation of the dialogue or staging, the essentials are right there in front of them.
Do you think this show has created more appetite for productions of this size?
I hope so, the runs we do every year in Melbourne and Sydney go from strength to strength and we've even heard that corporate bookers have been asking artists over in Oz to produce 'La Clique style parties' so people are identifying our name with a whole genre of entertainment, which is amazing really.
This run is constantly disproving the received wisdom that a show like this can't make money in the West End. As shows around us are closing down we're extending and extending.
What do you think the appeal is of this medium distinct from other artforms?
Its real and genuine, its constructed by the performers you see in front of you not a production manager. As cabaret performers we choreograph our shows, produce our own costumes and write our own jokes not like in a West End show. There is an authentic personality to every performance and the whole show that's not seen elsewhere. People get to watch a group of people who ‘live their lives by the 8 minutes' that they do their act for. Everything is about making those 8 minutes better with each show.
Its also a more physical medium than others and with physical theatre we can touch people in the same way as mythology does. We can use movement to tell stories in a way that also allows people their own interpretations of what they see.
What are La Clique's future plans?
We've got a run coming up in Paris and in Nantes and also a trip to Chicago and Toronto, there should be some time off coming after the America trip as we've been doing shows for 11 straight months!
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