TRAPPED: Tilted Productions: Edinburgh Fringe to 31st August

Edinburgh Fringe

TRAPPED
Zoo Southside (Venue 82): 23 - 31 Aug 2009: 10.55
0131 662 6892 www.zoofestival.co.uk

Running time: 1hour 12 minutes no interval
Review: Mark Courtice 24th August 2009

Dystopian Nightmare imaginatively done

Uniformed figures march jerkily to martial music in front of huge racks of files as Tilted's story of a person crushed by a dystopian state opens. From then a tale of individual revolt, civil war after which only the badge changes on the oppressors’ uniforms, and family betrayal unfolds.

In this production dance, dialogue and voice over are all combined. As is so often the case more effort seems to have been made with the movement and even the set than the words. Often banal, they are delivered by some poor acting, especially on tape. The amplified speech of the performers does gain something from the amplified breathing as they move.

The use of the big pieces of the clever set - the racks of files turn into prison bars over which the characters climb while the files are used to build walls - is full of imagination and seems to grow organically out of the material.

The performers’ physical skills are terrific and some long sequences of dance are fascinating, but while the domestic closeness of the reluctant rebels' home life is movingly done, this particular physical theatre technique makes for a broad-brush story with an obvious social and political message.

Performers
Amy Bell
Jake Ingram-Dodd
Lise Manavit
Simon Palmer
Phil Williams

Direction, design and choreography Maresa von Stockert
Original Music Jeremy Cox
Lighting Design Adrian Plaut
Costume Design Suzie Holmes

2009-08-26 14:16:35