Immigration, and the attitudes held towards it, is always going to be a tricky subject to address. Doing it through the medium of dance and physical theatre sounds even trickier. However, this young cast are wonderfully energetic dancers and the simply gorgeous choreography is a joy to watch. There are some stunning physical performances here. Chris Scott plays an immigrant newly-arrived in the UK and is outstanding in every facet of his performance, never faltering once. The physical theatre is so effective that immediately you realise that you have been transported to the deck of a ship even before the sound of waves kicks in. They transform the violence of a gang attack into beauty with utterly graceful slow-motion, making it all the more moving and difficult to watch.There are a lot of strong ideas here. They not only address the prejudice towards immigrants in our society today, but they also take us back in time, showing us examples of persecution throughout history. Don't get me wrong, this is wonderful to see but the issues are often hammered home to the point of being preachy and the piece as a whole is extraordinarily Anti-English, clubbing everyone together with football hooligans and loud, insensitive tourists. The acting as a whole needed to be vastly improved with the majority of the cast looking almost bored during dialogue, lines being stumbled over with no articulation and constant shuffling from one foot to another during unconvincing monologues which only served to distract. I applaud the extensive use of accents (some of which were perfect) but again, these needed to be improved overall and a Gestapo Guard with a broad London accent was frankly laughable.This cast are obviously enthusiastic about what they do. There are some pleasant surprises in the sudden use of singing and foreign language. They are unbelievably talented dancers with more energy than you can shake a stick at, who put their heart and soul into their physical performances. However, they need to transfer some of that soul into their acting before they can truly engage the audience and have them contemplating, what should be, a hard hitting performance all the way to their own home.
