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Theatre
Red Zone, Pleasance Two
Mary Brennan
WE have reached
the circus at the end of the world. The drum-rolls sound like
machine guns. The clowning is gladiatorial. The clowns themselves
look curiously mutant - white-face was never meant to be like
this. The more brutal and anarchic the mood, the more the (unseen,
amplified) crowd roars and applauds.
This is how Derevo
introduce us to the Red Zone. What follows is uneven, at
times opaque, but curiously memorable: Butoh meets Bunuel, genders
cross and perspectives tilt, exquisite fragile images are fleetingly
created - sometimes by mirrors, sometimes by shadow play -and
swiftly vanish, until one's thoughts are pushed into freefall.
But always there's a melancholy sense of unspecified threat, perhaps
echoing the group's own Russian roots and wandering existence,
alongside a desperate, thrashing energy that is oddly moving because,
like the performers, it seems impervious to common sense.
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