The Life and Rhymes of Archy and Mehitabel

It was my first time stepping into Teoteater, the small theatre tucked next to Kalma sauna, and the welcome immediately felt warm. The theatre itself is tiny and cosy, with a wall covered in photographs of performers adding to its intimate atmosphere.

On stage, there is a table, a chair, and a collection of objects whose purpose is not immediately obvious. Questions start forming in your head.

Then Patrick Kealey walks onto the stage.

For the next hour, he takes us into the world of Archy, a cockroach and former free-verse poet reincarnated into a rather unfortunate new body, along with Mehitabel the cat and a wonderfully eccentric collection of characters.

If you are someone who creates entire images or scenes in your head when listening to a story, this is the kind of theatre that feels made for you.

The props begin to make sense. Hats and objects appear and disappear. Accents change. Voices change. Characters come and go.

Kealey takes over the entire stage, shifting effortlessly between characters, voices and accents, giving each one a personality of its own. One actor, a table full of props, and a surprisingly large cast of creatures: somehow, he turns a tiny stage into an entire world.

The humour is wonderfully absurd and often sharply satirical. There are ridiculous situations, clever wordplay, colourful characters and, above all, plenty of observations about the wonderfully questionable behaviour of humans. Some of the jokes feel surprisingly contemporary despite the stories being nearly a century old.

And then, almost without warning, the tone shifts.

What begins as a funny and eccentric journey through the lives of insects slowly becomes something much more thoughtful. Archy’s observations turn towards humanity, our relationship with the natural world, and the consequences of the way we choose to live.

The final moments are particularly touching. The distance between the strange little creatures on stage and the humans sitting in the audience suddenly feels much smaller. There is a quiet connection between the two, and a reminder that perhaps we should pay a little more attention to the tiny lives sharing this world with us.

The Life and Rhymes of Archy and Mehitabel is funny, imaginative and unexpectedly moving. A one-man show with a surprisingly large cast, and a cockroach who may have a few things to teach us about being human.

The two final performances of The Life and Rhymes of Archy and Mehitabel are on 2 and 3 September. The Tallinn Fringe Festival continues until 18 September.

Author: Hélène