Performed and created by Ninon Noiret
Directed by Ninon Noiret and Camille Marmié
For one evening only, Manipulate plays host to a few side-walkers, as a strange, gallows-rich humour, and tender pulse runs through The Studio Theatre as The Raft of the Crab delivers a fusion of puppetry and physical theatre that transforms illness into something defiantly alive. Created and performed by Ninon Noiret, the piece navigates the aftermath of a life altering diagnosis, a world reshaped by fear, absurdity, and the stubborn will to keep moving.
The story unfolds through encounters with a crab like puppet that becomes both companion and tormentor, a creature that scuttles between metaphor and mischief as she confronts the fragility of her own body. The puppetry is the production’s beating heart. Under the guidance of Gavin Glover, the crab is manipulated with exquisite detail, never reduced to a symbol but instead emerging as a fully realised presence, by turns threatening, comforting, and darkly comic.
Noiret’s interactions with it are choreographed with a precision that borders on dance, her physicality carrying the emotional weight of the narrative. She folds, collapses, and rebounds with a resilience that mirrors the show’s central tension, the body as both battleground and storyteller. The humour that erupts from these exchanges is sharp and surprising, a kind of laughter that acknowledges pain without surrendering to it.
Light becomes a second performer in the room. Michaella Fee’s lighting design sculpts the stage into shifting pockets of intimacy and disorientation, amplifying the sense that the protagonist is drifting between states of being. The set, sparse but textured, evokes both the sea and the subconscious, a landscape where memory and imagination blur without ever overwhelming the performer’s presence. Sound deepens the atmosphere with subtlety. Jim Harbourne’s design blends low rumbles, creaks, and breaths into a sonic environment that underscores the physical strain of the performance. Silence becomes a dramatic tool, allowing the audience to sit inside the tension of Noiret’s stillness before the next burst of movement or humour breaks through.
Crucially, Noiret’s Chinese pole work becomes a narrative engine in its own right. Her climbs, slides, and suspended holds articulate the emotional labour of survival, the pole transforming into a vertical axis of fear, determination, and precarious balance. Each ascent feels like a refusal to succumb, each descent a confrontation with vulnerability. Dylan Reed and Emily Nichol‘s movement consultation ensures these sequences remain grounded in character rather than circus spectacle, allowing the physical vocabulary to speak with clarity and purpose.
What elevates The Raft of the Crab is its emotional honesty. The production never sentimentalises illness, nor does it wallow in despair. Instead, it embraces contradiction, the humour that surfaces in the face of fear, the beauty that emerges from vulnerability, the strange companionship found in the things that haunt us. Noiret’s performance is fearless, her body carrying the narrative with a rawness that feels both personal and universal. The Raft of the Crab stands as a vivid reminder that even in the darkest waters, there is room for laughter, connection, and the stubborn act of staying afloat.
Defiantly Alive
The Raft of the Crab was performed at The Studio Theatre
Running time – One hour without interval
Photo credit: Gabriel Stella
Review by Dominic Corr (contact@corrblimey.uk)
Editor for Corr Blimey, and a freelance critic for Scottish publications, Dominic has been writing freelance for several established and respected publications such as BBC Radio Scotland, The List, The Scotsman, Edinburgh Festival Magazine, The Reviews Hub, In Their Own League, The Wee Review and Edinburgh Guide. As of 2023, he is a member of the Critic’s Award for Theatre Scotland (CATS) and a member of the UK Film Critics.
