Lacklustre and often messy, Creature is saved by occasional moments of grace and elegance.
To be fair to Vanessa Cook, the creator behind the project, Creature opens well. The low levels of lighting give just enough illumination for the audience to make out the orb of the poster in one corner of the stage, occupied by an embryonic human. This is an immediately captivating, mysterious image. Then we have darkness, and notice the faint silhouettes of three people dangling from the theatre’s rig. This too is excellent, and as the figures slowly descend, wriggling and squirming, the lights come up and they eventually reach the stage. A positive to note here is that the performance takes the time it needs to develop its opening. Dance theatre, especially with elements of circus acrobatics, can all too often rush headlong into a high-energy set piece designed to provoke gasps from audiences, so I respect and admire the slow, considered approach taken by Creature, which works marvellously.
But from this point onwards, the production reveals itself to be seriously flawed and structurally incoherent. The beauty of the meditative beginning gives way to a sequence that relies on visual clichés. We have an unoriginal spawning scene, an awakening passage with some admittedly interesting shadow-play before we are jolted into what appears to be a fight scene involving all members of the ensemble. We skip from random segment to random segment, punctuated by a few effective displays of artistry (there is a particularly satisfying instant in which two performers form the vertical mirror image of the other), but ultimately the performance feels too disparate and empty to achieve its ambitions. That being said, the production does manage to close in style with the orb of the poster finally reappearing after its opening cameo and being put to good use.
Lacklustre and often messy, Creature is saved by occasional moments of grace and elegance.
