If These Walls Could Talk...?

Using a single room in a threadbare apartment, Dislocated have created a powerful set of stories of six "generations" of tenants, with a bittersweet thread of love and loss woven throughout, underpinned with a deep current of humour.  Every nuance is communicated solely through physical movement - combining dance, circus arts, and physical theatre - by this superbly-talented set of acrobats and dancers.  

Beginning with an elderly couple whose lives are so intertwined their every move is part of a creaky dance, and then seguing into their youth, showing the giddy joy of young love, once the couple's story ends, a trouple of overalled "removalists" tumble on stage to change the set between, riffing on classic clowning to break the tension between each scene of love and despair.  

The rest of the apartment's tenants are not overly lucky - a murder, a drug overdose, a depressive woman unable to move off the couch, and a man making multiple unsuccessful suicide attempts in a scene which veered skilfully between hilarity and deep despair. The highlight for me was one of the most moving scenes I have ever seen performed live, where a grieving man in the throes of "moving on" is intimately shadowed by the loving ghost of his former partner in an inspired acrobatic routine.  

The set evolves over time - the single couch is updated, and the picture above the fireplace flips over to show someone new has arrived, but the apartment remains mostly empty, allowing the lives told by the performers to take centre stage.  As they do in domestic life, single props such as a photo, a sprig of flowers, a scarf, and even a tiny mechanical goldfish take on their own intense significance in the lives of the tenants.

This was an affecting, moving and thoroughly engaging piece of theatre, made all the more vivid by period-influenced music (the waltz for the old couple was eerily reminiscent of the theme from "Up", and the 70s were heralded by music straight out of a blaxploitation movie soundtrack) and effective lighting design.  The audience occasionally applauded a recognisable circus trick, but were mostly deeply engrossed in the piece, and gave the cast several incredibly well-earned curtain calls.

Alex Armstrong