PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

More dispatches from Bristol Old Vic's work-in-progress showcase Ferment (Wed 11-Sat 21 Jan)

THEATRE Bodies in Flight's ‘Gymnast’ is a multimedia performance project involving documentary film, live gymnastics and sung text from a choir. Hard to describe and impossible to pigeonhole, it's a committed attempt to respond musically and conceptually to whatever it is that drives people to train their bodies. An esoteric inclusion in Ferment to keep us on our toes (whilst watching others poised on theirs) and a possible foretaste of the Cultural Olympiad. (Rina Vergano)

Elsewhere, Jack Dean's ‘Rain’ is a slice of something special - a lyrical exploration of the early years of the young poet/performer himself, delivered with touching fragility and panache. Can't wait to see where this one goes, but get rid of the music Jack - you and your words are enough. (Pam Cadek)

The latest offering from the prolific and unsoporific Sleepdogs is ‘The Bullet and the Bass Trombone’, an idea they’ve been cooking for some time about a composer who loses his orchestra during a military coup. Work by Sleepdogs has a transcendental quality that takes you out of the room and somewhere else, this time to a South American city and the forest surrounding it. Tim X Atack’s lyrical text is permeated by a sense of sadness and loss, and accompanied by an atmospheric soundscape that opens with the wistful and uncannily human sound of the whistling bird, a creature “on the cusp of extinction”. With TBATBT, Sleepdogs once again invoke a stillness in which we can listen intently to what happens around the edges of cathartic events, and partake in the fallout. A polished, intelligent layering of impressions that leaves you wanting to hear more. (RV)

Bocadalupa’s ‘Good Grief’ explores how to find that smile when people around you are dying, and how to deal with the ensuing schizophrenia of mood. It’s also firmly about the show having to go on and about the performer's need – duty, even – to provide light motifs in hard times. It evoked the New World’s musical/chorusline tradition that’s demanded in times of economic depression: the spirit of singing in the rain, make ‘em laugh, and all that. In this short showcase, two female clowns with buckets of tissues, water and stage presence and no vanity scratch the surface of a coalface of comic material, on a subject that could and does affect us all at the drop of a hat. Keep calm and carry on. (RV)

Inua Ellams' ‘Black T-Shirt Collection’ also benefits greatly from the writer delivering his own words – this time a sophisticated monologue about two very different Nigerian brothers. Ellams' script is dense and rewards your full attention, poetic images juxtaposed with playful banter, and an emotional story that manages to move from the personal to the global before you've really realised what's happening. Excellent and a must-see when it returns fully-fledged to the BOV in March. (PC)

Copyright Rina Vergano and Pam Cadek 2012