**** (4 stars)
“Beautiful images”
They couldn’t be more unalike. She likes slow, he likes fast; she loves the country, he the town. She dreams of sinking into the sea, transforming into a kelpie, devouring a sailor from a passing ship [and wakes with a strange taste in her mouth]. He dreams that his shoulder blades split, wings emerge, and he rises to join the cloud of red and gold wheeling in the sky above his tenement building…
There could hardly be a more unlikely friendship than that between feather boy and tentacle girl – but a deep and enduring friendship it is, played out before us in the vast space above the stage of Assembly Roxy Central. The show opens to our gasps as we see the two performers spotlight high above us, atop two tiny circles of metal at the top of two long poles, and the wonderment continues throughout the show.
You might be forgiven for thinking that Sadiq and Vee have wings or tentacles – or at least Velcro as an integral part of their skin. How do you cling, many feet up in the air, to a metal pole when both arms and legs are waving gently in the breeze? It’s even more bewildering when the two of them shin up the pole while hardly touching it, and still more so when they take off the brakes and slither down – surely they’ll crash into the floor? But no, they just stop with exactly enough room to spare, and we can breathe again…
Simply to call this a display of aerial skills is grossly to undervalue it. There’s so much more going on – storytelling, acrobatics, an incredible trust between two performers who quite literally hold each other’s lives in their hands. There’s a huge sense of fun, too, as the two glide through the air, tumble on the ground, shin up and down the vertical poles, hang from a cable, or whirl round on a rotating pole, almost faster than the eye can see…
Vee’s kelpie suddenly grows hungry – ravenous, even – and reaches out greedily for food, getting ever nearer and nearer the audience until she rushes at us, and only Sadiq’s intervention prevents carnage. Sadiq’s wings try to grow and he dreams of flying but can’t take off: as he crouches in terror, thinking Vee is now going to eat him – but she’s reaching out a hand to help him…. Together they battle against a tremendous wind and swirling ash or snow. Vee gets to fly in a swirling cloud of sea foam, and Sadiq realises his dream of flying among the tumbling red and gold feathers.
There are innumerable beautiful images among the breathtaking feats of aerialism: and running all the way through the show the tangible evidence of that warm and most unlikely friendship of two very different people who yet find common ground, working together to enable each other to fly.
Today’s performance of one element of the Made in Scotland showcase was a sell-out. The run finishes on Sunday and is selling very well. Rush and get your tickets NOW!
The unlikely friendship of feather boy and tentacle girl, Central at Assembly Roxy (Venue 139) for more information go to : https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/the-unlikely-friendship-of-feather-boy-and-tentacle-girl
ScotsGay Arts 