Don Gnu – Tennis
With the longest legs and the shortest shorts, and of course, their requisite socks and sandals, it is the legendary showdown between Don McEnroe and Björn Gnu, the 1980 Wimbledon finale between the cool Swede and the volatile New Yorker, a game of one-upmanship which starts as soon as they arrive on the court and begin limbering up, a largely non-verbal confrontation in which they let racquets do the talking for them.
Warming up, do they find their rhythm or does the music find them as the grass court shuffle begins and McEnroe attempts to rearrange the court to his advantage before sending a volley to the umpire, his notorious temper on full display as his backhand tactics backfire, but the evidence would seem to suggest that even with the court set against Gnu, casually returning each serve, he might simply be the better player…
Returning to their now familiar home away from home of Zoo Southside which hosted Walk Man and Tourist, Danish physical action theatre duo and Fringe favourites Don Gnu return with a duo performance of Tennis from their flexible founding members Jannik Elkær and Kristoffer Louis Andrup as Don McEnroe and Björn Gnu on an astroturf and neon-lit forced perspective centre court, the net shrinking towards the back of the stage, and while the tantrums and interruptions are inevitable given the personalities, there are also upsets.
Gnu losing the first set and suffering an existential crisis, inconsolable, can McEnroe find it in himself to comfort his opponent – and will he be accepted or rejected? Battle finally commencing between the iconic adversaries of tennis, at one point paying homage to another famous image of the era, like Norse gods they fight through thunder and rain, McEnroe refusing to be defeated and rising like some monstrous biomechanical butterfly, a match to remember played out like never before.
Tennis continues at Zoo Southside until Sunday 25th August
