John Barrymore
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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MONKEY (HOME)
Abattoir Fermé finds inspiration for its new piece Monkey in two legendary tales of debauchery.
In the 17th century, John Wilmot assembled the so called Merry Gang, a bunch of artists and noblemen from the court of Charles II, to keep him company when going down the drain. In the 1940's, Errol Flynn, W. C. Fields, John Barrymore and other Hollywood stars styled themselves the Bundy Drive Boys, when going out on the rampage together.
Booze and sex, public provocation, pranks and practical jokes, theatrical pose, misanthrope humour, transgression and self destruction,.. are all recurrent themes with both outfits.
For Abattoir Fermé the misadventures of these two clubs form only a starting point, in drawing a portrait of a new group of characters, in a permanent state of "in extremis", somewhere on a distant and lonely planet, ugly, grotesque and without mercy.
After Tourniquet, Mythobarbital and Snuff, Abattoir Fermé's Monkey is once again a performance without text.
Zdeněk Miler, 90, Czech animator and illustrator, creator of The Mole[1].