Amber

When a show is fit to bursting with its own unique mixture of ambitious ideas, literate language, humour, poignance, creativity, vitality, and outright oddities, it would look like an easy recommendation, yes? There will be those who are thoroughly delighted and entirely thrilled by Amber, as well as others who - like this reviewer - are more cautious in their enthusiasm and measured in their praise.

In attempting to put a love story at the centre of this piece while surrounding it with all manner of unusual business in the margins, Amber possibly disadvantages itself in two ways. Rather than getting the best of both worlds, the reassuringly conventional elements (provided by the intense-but-doomed romance), while probably designed to communicate on a wholly human level, instead feel like they are keeping back this production from truly soaring into the stratosphere.

Conversely, those who seek a satisfying love story may feel distracted, even bewildered, by some of the thematic detours taken by the text, imaginative and intriguing though these often are. They might also consider the character of Gao to be a less-than-appealing (and somewhat problematic) protagonist. Female lead Shen is, by comparison, an engaging and richly compelling characterisation; perhaps the script could have focused itself more closely on her.

Amber is more a work of performance art than one of traditional storytelling, closer to a series of quirky vignettes than a satisfying whole. While this characteristic is largely responsible for the degree of excitement and interest that it manages to generate, it is also what keeps it at the level of a promising, energetic, exploratory experiment, rather than that of a deeply engaging and resonant piece of work.

Those who seek something that is undoubtedly different from the norm (yet not at the outer extremes of experimentalism) will probably feel that they got their money's worth from Amber, but others in the audience may, at some point during the 135-minute run time, find these words from the text itself applying to their experience as a viewer (or re-viewer): "I admire your irreverence, but I've heard enough."

Anthony Vawser