“Consummate circus skills meet sharp contemporary choreography,” making Motionhouse: Nobody, “an adrenaline fuelled & dynamic adventure.”
📍 Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 Wed 7 Jun 2023
🕖 Evening 7.30pm
🕖 Running time: Approx 2 hours (with one interval)
🎬 Concept and Director: Kevin Finnan
🎼 Original Composer: Tim Dickinson and Sophy Smith
🧵 Costume Designer & Creator: Sophie Donaldson
⚒️ Set Designer: Simon Dormon
💡 Lighting Designer: Natasha Chivers
🎞️ AV Design: Barret Hodgson
🎦 Digital Imagery: Logela Multimedia
🎂 7+
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Audio Induction Loop
The persistently groundbreaking Motionhouse arrived in Edinburgh this June 7th, the last show date in a European tour of Nobody which kicked off back in September 2021. Consummate circus skills meet sharp contemporary choreography, resulting in an adrenaline fuelled & dynamic adventure.
Critically, this abstract but strongly narratively driven show can be understood without reading up before curtain up. I’d recommend coming into the stalls so naive, simply to offer another dimension to the experience. Why are raucous flocks of crows descending upon an urban landscape? Why are they besetting a group of friends sitting down for a pizza & games night?
Younger audiences might find a fantastical adventure, one where a group of chums must find the bravery and solidarity to survive a corvid plague. Those more advanced towards triple digits, however, will quickly decipher the allegory, and the role of the crows as black avatars of our heroes’ personal demons. That naivety didn’t last long, did it? Well I did warn you.
Taken literally, or in the abstract, Nobody remains a thrilling, visceral adventure, bursting with high-flying, muscularly athletic derring-do. Kevin Finnan’s highly ambitious concept is brought to life through an intimate interplay of the 7 strong performing troupe’s talents, and the technical team’s prowess.
The dancers who each deserve immense praise for their tireless, fearless, and sharply coordinated performances give every evidence of a well-oiled machine. In combination they exhibit an intimate professionalism, whether sending one or more airborne, or caressing each other with utmost style. There’s a great deal of trust inherent to the circus arts, but this is pushed to quite literal heights by their continued interactions with Designer Simon Dormon’s set.
There’s no needless complication in the staging which pulses with technical confidence. Logela Multimedia and Barret Hodgson conspire to project a consistently evolving backdrop. Shrouded in material it becomes a building amongst the urban sprawl; denuded, it proves a deceptively strong climbing frame. Now a high perch for crows, and a cage-cum-obstacle for their human targets, it is continually manipulated to suspend the performers high above a safety-net free stage. Accordingly, the costumes from Sophie Donaldson are kept lightweight and efficient, whilst leaving no doubts as to who is what, whilst proceedings are dramatically lit by Natasha Chivers.
The strongly synthesised soundtrack from Tim Dickinson and Sophy Smith won’t be to all tastes, and is perhaps a tad anonymous, but it pulses appropriately, and conveys the intended tonal shifts.
More impressively, a clever interplay of light and shade, and a constant interchange of the lead dancers plucks much from the magician’s toolkit, proceedings heavily laced with misdirection and big reveals. The eye is drawn one way only to find a crow or a hero abruptly conjured elsewhere; a dancer is stuck to a wall by invisible hands; shadows threaten to act independently of their owner. Nobody is very much a spectacle.
However, though this show of imbalanced halves – the first an hour, the second 30 minutes – might promise a jam-packed post-libation finale, it doesn’t quite materialise. Whilst it certainly doesn’t lack for audio-visual oomph, nor physical ambition, this final segment lacks the narrative drive found prior. In truth it becomes a different show, still impressive, but less gripping now reduced to an almost orgiastic celebration.
Despite this, Nobody from Motionhouse is an unmistakably world-class piece of work, from a company still at the top of their game more than 30 years in business.
Motionhouse: Nobody is a Motionhouse production commissioned by and created in partnership with University of Kent, ART31 and Midlands Arts Centre. Supported by Dance Hub Birmingham, Arts Connect and The Leche Trust.
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