Imaginations in the round

Tramway Glasgow

EVERY now and then the eclectic, maddeningly indefinable genre they call performance art throws up a show of such startling inventiveness it makes us want to pack up our buttoned-up British cynicism and move to the continent, where they take such work more seriously.

60 Degrees, by the Dutch company Silo Theater is such a show. The company took their name from the disused grain silo in which they began their work. Evicted by the authorities, they are now based in another squatted site on the outskirts of Amsterdam.

There is something at once profoundly anarchic and deeply humanistic about the parallel revolving universe they create. Before entering the theatre space we are met in the Tramway foyer by the five performers, who appear like characters from a down-at-heel, slightly sinister version of the tales of Lewis Carroll. When their wonderful and bizarre musical performance is over, we are ushered into a fabulous netherworld.

A round tent affair sits in the middle of the main space. As we walk around it, the Teddy Bear sitting with its face to the wall offers us a taste of what is to come. We are invited inside the tent to discover an exquisitely intricate mechanised set. The audience sits on three banks of seats, and the players move from one group of theatregoers to the next. As their simple, wordless performance comes to a close, the extraordinary moving stage creaks into action.

Made up of three concentric circles which can spin together or independently of each other, the set is home to an incredible combination of theatrical mechanics, recorded music and sound, projected images and physical performance. As it revolves, an array of images collide .

Life on board a ship appears to merge with a macabre fairground in which soft toys bounce around in a cage. A man tries, and constantly fails, to make a phone connection while a strawberry-loving female acrobat with fitted metal talons spins in a door contraption.

Billed as a family performance, this production is joyously playful. 60 Degrees is, quite simply, a work of imaginative genius.