LONDON, May 5 — A 40-foot-tall mechanical elephant trudged through a London parade-ground Friday as part of a traveling theater show — using its piston-operated trunk to spray hundreds of awe-struck spectators with jets of water.

The 42-ton contraption, made mostly of wood and metal, was created by the French theater group Royal de Luxe as part of a play it performs as the beast is pushed along by a truck.
''It's terrifying! ''I've never seen such a spectacle,'' exclaimed Japanese student Mina Yagi, 34, as the elephant approached a fence separating it from the crowd at Horse Guards Parade, normally used for royal ceremonies.

The animal is used by the troupe to help tell the story of a forlorn sultan beguiled by visions of a young girl whom he believed was traveling through time. The sultan builds a time-traveling elephant to lead him on a journey to find the girl, who is represented by a giant marionette towering 16 feet high.
The hydraulically operated elephant rolls along with wheels attached to the back and front, where an operator controls the steering. Several other operators harnesses lift the feet as the creature moves, while others control the trunk and blinking of the eyes.
Its floppy ears were created from 720 square feet of leather, while 22 pistons control the trunk, organizers said.

''We wanted to bring something really monumental, and free and accessible to the public here,'' said Helen Marriage, whose company Artichoke Productions helped bring the exhibit to London.
For Friday's performance, a loud boom signaled the start of the show as characters dressed as the sultan and his entourage mounted the pachyderm and towered over the crowd.
The creature drew gasps and cheers from the crowd as it swung its trunk from side to side, spraying water on people wilting under a sun worthy of midsummer.

Royal de Luxe are an extraordinary European street theatre company, renowned on three continents but hardly known in Britain.

The director Jean Luc Courcoult founded the company in 1979, and they have performed all over the world ever since.

The company has visited countries all over Europe as well as Korea, China, Vietnam, Chile and Africa. Some of their most celebrated shows – including La véritable histoire de France, Roman photo tournage and Le péplum have been revived many times and performed in front of thousands of spectators. They spent six months in Africa and three in China

In the past dozen years, they have created a series of spectacular shows involving giant figures as big as 11 or 12 metres high. Shows are simple – the animal or giant arrives in town and lives its life, going about its business for a few days. Extraordinary interactions take place between passers-by and the performance; residents become enchanted with the activities of these miraculous beings and begin to follow their every move. By the end of the performance, huge crowds gather daily to watch the latest episode in the life of the visiting creature. The Sultan’s Elephant is the fifth in the series of giant pieces, the others being Le Géant tombé du ciel, Le géant tombé du ciel: dernier voyage, Retour d'Afrique and Les Chasseurs de girafes.

La visite du sultan des Indes sur son éléphant à voyager dans le temps was first performed in Nantes from May 19th to 22nd and in Amiens from June 16th to 19th 2005, on the occasion of the centenary of Jules Verne's death. This production was commissioned by the cities of Nantes and Amiens and has received a special grant from the Ministry of Culture and Communication.

On the Net:
The Sultan's Elephant, http://www.thesultanselephant.com

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