GDIF 2024: Crap at Animals – Well Hall Pleasaunce, London

Tom Bailey of performance company Mechanimal brings attention to the plight of endangered animals (and our planet) with Crap at Animals, a humorous show for the whole family.

Crap at Animals

The feat is certainly impressive. Tom Bailey not only attempts to do impressions of the 44,000 animals that are extinct or endangered, he also walked from Scotland to Denmark to perform Crap at Animals at Passage Festival. Read more about his journey here.

He’s now back, a little closer to home at this year’s Greenwich + Docklands International Festival (GDIF). The Salterton Arts Review, living not too far from Greenwich in South East London, has been an eager attendee of this festival for the past few years. Their programming is always important as well as engaging, and inclusive of local communities and access needs alike.

In this sense, Crap at Animals certainly fits the bill. I saw it in a park in Eltham, with a generous accessible seating area and BSL/visual vernacular interpretation by Becky Barry (who we previously saw in this). And as I mentioned, the show is an attempt to do impressions of the 44,000 animals on the extinct and endangered list. Certainly both important and engaging. But where to even start?

Well, Bailey starts one by one. Even before the show begins, an on-screen projection starts naming species. We are also given cards with different animals on them, for us later. Once Bailey begins his performance, he starts out by interpreting the animals named on screen, to increasingly humorous effect. The mass extinction of the Anthropocene is of course no laughing matter. And yet… Arrogant Shrew. Impressed Tortoise. Thespian Grass Mouse. It has to be said that many of these creatures naturally lend themselves to physical comedy.

A Migrating Artwork

But 44,000 is of course an impossible number of impressions in a 45 minute show. That’s part of the point: the list is growing at a terrifying rate (from 26,000 when Mechanimal made their previous show, Vigil, in 2019). The scale is overwhelming. A sequence which runs through many names of endangered or extinct grasshoppers illustrates just how much biodiversity we are losing.

But bringing it down to a more comprehensible scale is part of the charm of this show. And it’s not 45 minutes of impressions: funny as that might be, the gag would surely lose its charm at some point. Crap at Animals also incorporates a mock VR experience that changes the pace, increases audience interaction, and prepares the way for a collective and rather poignant final sequence.

The power of Crap at Animals is in reaching audiences with serious messages through humour (a bit like this). And it really is a show for the whole family. Kids may not understand why Bailey is reticent about miming a Problematic Flasher, but they will enjoy the physical humour of the impressions. For adults, there is more pause for thought. By not just creating this show, but giving thought to how to responsibly tour it, Mechanimal bring a thoughtful yet urgent spotlight to issues affecting all life on this planet, from us to the humble Bumhill Wisp.

A final note on the location of this performance. Where is Well Hall? And what’s a ‘pleasaunce’ anyway? A lovely public garden in Eltham, Well Hall was once a medieval moated manor. The main structure remaining today is a tudor barn which operates as a restaurant and wedding venue. In between being a moated manor and a public park, the site was also home to children’s author E. Nesbit. Well worth a look if you’re in the area. And a pleasaunce? It is “a garden, particularly a pleasure garden, secluded by trees, shrubs, and hedges.” Delightful.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3/5

Crap at Animals on until 1 September only as part of GDIF (free, no tickets required!). More info here, and the full GDIF programme here.