A man sits on a bathroom seat underneath a highlight, his bare physique smeared with chalk and black splodges. He will get as much as strut, writhe or jiggle his bits. It’d sound just like the stuff of an underground fetish membership – Adam Scott-Rowley its creature – however it’s a bodily meditation on mortality and the dying physique.
There isn’t any through-narrative, and the present is constructed on surreal non-sequitur flashes, some arcane and inaccessible, others searing, tragic, comically grotesque. The present’s creator, Scott-Rowley is an astonishingly protean performer who’s magnetic to look at. He preens underneath a highlight like a younger Adonis however then bends to grow to be an aged girl dancing stiffly or an outdated man weeping in ache. He could be a determine from a biblical hell in some scenes – a Dantean fiend or one in all Hieronymus Bosch’s wretches, silently screaming.
Co-created with Joseph Prowen and Tom Morley, the narrative is huge and free, generally an excessive amount of so, and appears to span the ages. There’s a man caught in a properly, a lady dancing to Frank Sinatra, an historical Celt performing a sacrifice. They stand on a precipice between life and dying, in their very own discrete worlds, and the play doesn’t construct to something better than these components.
Consequently, it appears made up of strands of thought fairly than a deeper meditation, its meanings simply out of grasp – like dying, I suppose. It’s a uniquely arresting present regardless of the bittiness – a cross between bodily theatre and efficiency artwork, and surprisingly witty regardless of its darkness. There’s an viewers sing-along to A Dildo Hanging Out of My Arse, written by Phil McDonnell, which is a genuinely warming second. The sound design by Sam Baxter brings its personal drama, from demonic chants to digital beats and explosions, together with Matt Cater’s dream-like lighting.
Nothing is off-limits and it’s so earthy and uncovered that the bathroom itself threatens to grow to be Chekhov’s gun: is Scott-Rowley going to prime all of it off by utilizing it, for actual?
Having transferred from the Edinburgh fringe, the nakedness appears greater than a pageant gimmick. At its most potent, it’s a post-pandemic present staring into the face of our latest previous, its silences charged, its nakedness weak, timeless and epic.
