**** (4 stars)
“A complex mixture”
This is not an easy piece, for many reasons: but it is an important one – especially for the younger members of today’s audience, but almost certainly for the rest of us, as I doubt many of those present could remember back to the 1940s.
Iddo Oberski and his puppet friend Svjetlana take us on “a journey of becoming”, inviting us to open our hearts and welcome in that most important thing of all – love.
Iddo moves slowly but decisively around the stage, clad in a suit that is half white, half black. He comes on stage using two sticks, but plants them in holders and thereafter moves slowly, staring at his feet, and walking very carefully and precisely. The reason for this becomes clear as he recounts his life-changing experience of a spinal stroke which left him without conscious sense of his lower limbs, which he must deliberately move for each step he wishes to take: he is his own puppeteer. Both moving and sitting are painful, so the whole show contains a well-thought out and painstakingly performed choreography which reflects the balancing act that is his life.
The show is a complex mixture: a personal account of disability, a musing on the work and thought of Rudolf Steiner, a story of tragedy as the Shoah [Holocaust] takes the lives of a staggering number of family members; a search for understanding of self, soul, and spirit. There are conjuring tricks performed so smoothly as to make them seem normal rather than magical. There is poetry, and music, and art. And Svjetlana pops up from time to time, commenting and asking questions which ultimately guide Iddo towards a greater understanding of himself and what spiritual freedom might look like.
One of Svjetlana’s comments struck me deeply. “You don’t have a disability. When I found you, you had two legs and two sticks”, to which Iddo responds that he needs the sticks because his legs have fallen asleep.
Everyone present will have responded differently to this show. I was sorry not to be able to stay for the half-hour facilitated discussion which followed: and also sorry not to have been able to grasp everything that was being said – there wasn’t time to ponder one interesting or intriguing remark, because something else immediately followed, and then yet more…
Overall, I think I came away with the concept of balancing in freedom. One is the sum of many parts: balancing them gives the greatest possibility of a live lived in wholeness, regardless of family history or physical abilities. Much to ponder…
Balancing in Freedom, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, production returns on Saturday 13th June and Sunday 20th November 2026 for more information and tickets go to: https://scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/event/913:6368/
ScotsGay Arts 