Knock, knock. Who’s there? In Peeping Tom’s suspenseful shows you can never be sure. The Belgium-based dance-theatre company builds atmospheric and often bewildering stage architecture. The Missing Door, The Lost Room and The Hidden Floor – a triptych they are taking to the UK – open up noirish worlds of intrigue, illusions and lugubrious comedy. These walls not only have ears but full-blown personalities; the closets don’t have skeletons but whole bodies; look in one of their mirrors and the face you see won’t be yours.
The triptych is an intense night out, opening with a maid mopping up blood and ending with nothing less than the apocalypse. But co-artistic director Franck Chartier, wearing a goatee and a big grin, is in a breezy mood when he arrives on his scooter to meet for morning coffee in Ostend. It’s more than 20 years since he founded the company with his partner, Gabriela Carrizo. Where did that name come from? “We are always a bit like this as creators,” he says, leaning over conspiratorially. “We look at people,” he continues, casting an eye at the unsuspecting couple next to us in the cafe. “We watch how people eat, who they are, we get ideas. We look for situations in real life and in our families. We talk about taboos. We thought, ‘OK, we are kind of peeping toms.’” He looks a little uneasy. “I don’t know – in English, it has a sexual connotation?”
