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| Unidentified actors in The Great Air Robbery. |
This piece was the collective creation of the leftwing,
politically-oriented San Francisco Mime Troupe, in those days one of the
best-known avant-garde companies in the U.S.A., famous for its street
performances. It was performed in repertory with Brecht’s The Mother during a period of residence at the Chelsea.
The Great Air Robbery,
devised for street theatre presentation, was a simplistic, sloganeering,
science-fiction parody, set in the near future where prices are crazily
inflated, the air is polluted beyond breathability, and the Martians are blamed
for it all. A Humphrey Bogart-like black private eye, dressed in 30s clothes, is
employed to find out who is spying on a woman scientist who has come up with a pollution-removal
device.
Clive Barnes found the work unexciting, juvenile, and unfunny,
but praised the “assurance” of the cast, the ingenuity of their street theatre
set, and the pleasantness of their pop music. He thought their revolutionary
political aims of little merit, however, in the creation of vital theatre.
TJE