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Actor in Josse De Pauw’s “üBUNG.”

In one of the rare instances where lip-synching is not only engrossing but also applauded, the child actors of the Belgium-based theater company Victoria proved captivating as copycats in last Saturday night’s performance of writer/actor/director Josse De Pauw’s “üBUNG” at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, drawing to an end UCLA Live’s second International Theatre Festival.

The premise of “üBUNG” – Flemish for “practice” – is rather simple. Six children, aged approximately nine to 14, provide voice-overs for six adult characters in a muted black-and-white film. The children, dressed in replicated clothes, even mimic certain movements and gestures of their celluloid counterparts. In terms of timing and accuracy, they were impeccable to the point where some audience members chuckled in amazement. The child actors’ tone and body language also matched those of their respective film characters.

The film depicts a bourgeois dinner party at a remote country house where a Russian violinist, a middle-aged goofball, and two married couples soon resort to some not-so-innocent behavior. Their dinner party spirals into a drunken release of rage, euphoria and sexual frustration, which served as a timely showcase for the children’s talents. Scenes in which multiple characters are speaking at the same time were performed cleanly and almost with flair. The children mastered the drunken guffaws and giggles, which might be more difficult to mimic than normal conversations.

The child actors won over the audience during a scene that saw one character blasting out corny jokes without shame, another character repeatedly screaming in sorrow and another performing a drunken rendition of Eric Clapton’s “You Look Wonderful Tonight” – all in unison. This cacophony of various emotional sounds was blissfully uncomfortable.

Something that was visibly a tad uncomfortable was the children taking off their clothes (undergarments intact) in plain sight. De Pauw no doubt purposely placed the costume racks on stage and directed the children to change very slowly, almost seductively. A hush fell over the audience as the boys and girls took turns stripping down.

It seems as though De Pauw’s intention was to question people’s ideas of what is appropriate and how far art can go. Aside from exploring the effects adults (rather than music and television) have on children and their inevitable loss of innocence, the production made audiences feel unsure about where they draw the line.

-David Chang