critics/reviews
Mister Molsk : the power of an object called sound’
The visual by means of objects and set, has completely disappeared in favour of sounds; on the floor there’s nothing but five pillars with different types of speakers on top of them. Behold the Museum of Sounds. Mister Molsk is a cleaner in the museum and with a huge headphone on his head he bounces along while cleaning the room with his broom.
He is satisfied to live in his own world this way. Until he takes off his headphone and becomes aware of what’s happening around him in the Museum of Sound. He gets tangled up in a stream of sounds. No more peace and quiet, he has to do something if he does not want to crumble under all the sounds surrounding him. At first we hear the peaceful sound of sea waves that slowly changes into a huge storm that almost blows Molsk away. When he, more or less, controls the storm a baby starts to cry and cannot be comforted. His first impulse is to hide the speaker which, of course, does not help at all and crying goes on and on. A barking dog demands some attention too and when he does not get it he becomes quite agressive. And on top of everything; a car races right through the museum and threatens the baby, the dog and Mister Molsk himself. He is being forced to open himself up towards his environment, finding a way to comfort the dog and baby and make them feel at ease.
Etienne Borgers builds his own virtual world of sounds while performing. It’s fascinating to see how he transforms sounds into an object. When he picks up a speaker with the sound of a crying baby, he is really picking up a baby and his audience – from +4 years olds – follows him without any effort. Etienne Borgers is not only a huge musical talent, which shows from the music he composes for his songs, but he has also an expressive body that enlarges every emotion. In his battle against violent sounds he shows a moving helplessness that makes the audience love him even more. With this performance Etienne Borgers has found a new and surprising way to make visual and musical theatre.
Marla Kleine, WP
The poetic performance ‘Herr Molsk’ awakens the children’s fantasy and shows a whole universe as made by Etienne Borgers
Wizard of sound
Out of speakers crawls a dog, a race car and a baby. A whole world becomes visual from only speakers.
‘Herr Molsk’ is a very interesting world filled with fantasy made for children but also the grownups can really enjoy it and philosophy over it.
It’s all about Herr Molsk and his job in the museum of sound, but in spite of his job he’s not much interested in sound at all. He does the cleaning of the museum walking around with headphones on with rock music and doesn’t hear a sound around him. Magic happens when he one day takes off his headphones.
The scenography is very simple, a white floor with white lights. Five speakers of different sizes stand on socles around the room, four speakers outside the room and one man; that’s all.
The speakers start making sounds like wind that becomes a storm, animal sounds, a baby crying, than the sound world immediately creates a very real universe. Herr Molsk likes this universe very much and so do the children in the audience.
After we hear a little wind blowing, a storm builds up and in the end calms down, we hear a baby crying. Herr Molsk picks up the speakers (now a baby) and finds out what the baby wants. This baby and a dog stay with him along his journey with dangers and poetic scenes along the way.
The performance is made and played by Etienne Borgers. He’s fantastic at making the sounds come alive with his body language. He’s very good at expressing all the different emotions the sounds trigger and his timing to the sounds of the speakers is fantastic. The performance triggers the fantasy of the children; they can dream, smell and taste everything the sounds create. So simple, so genius.
At the same time the performance gives a commentary on the fear grownups have to the virtual world and is as well a commentary to all those who ‘live their lives wearing headphones and don’t hear a sound in the world surrounding them’.
Ranablad 30 april 2010
