Theatre review: Bright Black

Published on 17/09/2009 18:55

BRIGHT BLACK **** TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH

LAST year, emerging touring stars Vox Motus thrilled audiences across Scotland with Slick, a brilliant grotesque fantasy about an ill-parented child who finds himself in trouble when a lucrative oilwell gushes from the family toilet bowl. Now though, co-directors Candice Edmunds and Jamie Harrison return to much more familiar territory, with a show about personal bereavement that echoes much recent work by other companies, and runs the risk of restating the obvious: that the death of a young person is tragic and difficult to accept.

As shows on this theme go, though, Vox Motus's Bright Black is a beautiful and sometimes disturbing piece of work, a 60-minute meditation on loss that combines brilliantly inventive design and movement with three striking performances from Meline Danielewicz, Jenny Hulse and Martin McCormick. In the flat she once shared with her dead boyfriend, Claire cowers in a corner; the place is now so empty – stripped and thrust into bin-bags – that even doors, windows and fireplaces only unfold fleetingly from the floor. At the door stands her friend Fay, knocking, ringing, trying to reach her; and in the flat, a demon prowls, in the shape of Cerberus, the dog who in legend guards the gates of the underworld.

The show could perhaps use a little less of Cerberus's loud poetic meditations on Claire's journey through grief; he is a demon tempting her with guilt, false bargains and black despair, not a narrator. But in charting Claire's slow progress through this time of shadows, this beautifully concentrated show reveals a real sensitivity to the phases of grief. Cerberus looms out of the darkness like a true force of nature, thanks to Simon Wilkinson's superb lighting; and Natasha Gilmore's subtle choreography weaves sensuously through the text, adding meaning, physical danger and true tenderness at every turn of the story.