Wail (Battersea Arts Centre)
Humpback whales are nature's crooners. Each winter, they get together off the coast of Madagascar for a good old lung-busting sing-song. Call them school choirs if you will. Or whale voice choirs.
Scientists still don't know why whales sing – still less why their songs are so complex and collective – but we've a good idea about why humans do. That, really, is what Little Bulb are out to explore in this kooky, but infectious, piece of gig theatre. The pun-slinging title gives it away.
For an hour, Clare Beresford and Dominic Conway sing and strum their way through a set-list of whale-related songs – some of their own, and some, like the ethereal Gaelic folk song "Fareweel to Tae Tarwathie", passed down through the years. Imagine an episode of The Really Wild Show crossed with a Barton Hollow gig.
On the surface, it's kind of interesting – a heap big trivia fest set to music. Conway measures out the 16 metres of a humpback and, for a moment, you marvel at this elongated tape measure. Beresford talks you through the intricacies of whalesong: 18-minute long round robins of moans, whoops, creaks and shrieks.
But that's mostly by the by. Deep down, this is about species of song and, as they cycle through a music school of instruments, from mandolins to timpani, each song has its own particular tone and its own mode of expression. Conway picks up an electric guitar to express anger. (He's never seen a whale, you see.) Beresford lets loose her extraordinary, piercing voice on a love song.
If singing is social for us, so it might be for whales. It's possible their brains – in some ways more complex than ours – mean groups can think as one. This, I suspect, is where Little Bulb are driving at and, even if there's an over-reliance on skittish television spoofs that comes out like The Fast Show or Look Around You, this is a small show that asks us to come together, to make fools of ourselves in front of one another and, most of all, to sing in sync. Little Bulb have an irrepressible charm, the sort that keeps a smile on your face throughout, no matter how slight or whimsical their material, and it's that, above all else, that makes Wail work. Sing up, sing loud and sing whale.
Wail runs at Battersea Arts Centre until 23 April.
