Paulina Lenoir review: Puella Eterna is hypnotic and a little bit magic
Edinburgh Fringe
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Edinburgh Fringe 〰️
Image: David Pickens
by Zoe Paskett
The stage is arranged like the dressing room of a beloved Hollywood star appearing on Broadway. Tulle abounds. Every piece marks a different moment in a whole life played out over 55 minutes, from birth to rebirth.
Paulina Lenoir’s Puella Eterna is an international poet of great renown and quivering, wide-eyed intensity, whose poeticism manifests in many ways, from poignant questions about purpose to single sparkling moments of commanding eye-contact.
She possesses a hypnotic quality that has the audience entranced from the start, whether that’s to have them acting like stage-hands or to be her own mother. She revels in the light and shade, taking her time with moments of silence as she folds on another layer of frills, or enthusiastically raging through the menopause.
Packing an entire life cycle into under an hour is no easy feat, but Paulina knows which stages to dedicate the most time to. The puppetry of her birth is stunningly well-executed: an adult-sized head on a tiny doll’s body is objectively funny in itself (it just is!), but she also manages to imbue an inanimate object with the same physical comedy ability she has herself.
This show is as audibly arresting as it is visual – she creaks her way through adolescence and snaps and crackles as she transforms into adulthood. When the sound of a theremin came on over the speakers towards the end my immediate response was, but of course there is a theremin! This is a theremin kind of comedy!
It does take a unique artist to convincingly demand audience members pull out chunks of their own hair, and still have the whole room on their feet at the end, but it all plays into my suspicions that Paulina is just a little bit magic.
Paulina Lenoir: Puella Eterna is at Assembly Roxy (Downstairs), from Jul 31st-Aug 25th (except 12th, 19th). Tickets here
