At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe it can often feel very hard to be alone. At one of the busiest arts festivals in the world, there isn't much space to be alone with one's thoughts. Even during performances we are constantly grabbed and shook, the performers trying their best to make themselves stand out amongst the myriad shows audiences will see on any given day. What a relief, then, to see Working On My Night Moves. Wordlessly, without coersion or insistence, this show allows you to sit back and take in its art. Rarely do shows at the Fringe operate with such integrity and afford the audience such patience. It shows that with time invested, great things can happen.
Seeps into the audience's imagination and encourages a playfulness not seen anywhere else.
Working On My Night Moves is an abstract show discussing the ways in which women take up space in a public environment. That may not be immediately clear, though. For that matter, nothing about the show is immediately, or perhaps even ever, clear to some audience members. The beautiful thing about the show though is that that isn't important. Working On My Night Moves works exclusively in environmental awareness. We watch as two theatre technicians intricately, silently rearrange theatre equipment to create stunning tableaus. It is, for once in the most hectic month of the year, peaceful. At the same time it is haunting, alienating, funny, odd and even thrilling, but most importantly it gives the audience time to think and consider the puzzle pieces being arranged. Almost meditative, it seeps into the audience's imagination and encourages a playfulness not seen anywhere else at the Fringe.
Working in tandem with the silent yet hugely expressive performances of Julia Croft and Nisha Madhan, this performance succeeds due to some truly phenomenal sound design. Created by Te Aihe Butler (and featuring original compositions by Jason Wright), the way the sound seemingly comes from one small source while echoing and eminating from every corner of the room elevates the show from stage magic to what feels like genuine enchantment. Whilst in Summerhall's Old Lab we are fully existing inside the world of these two theatre technicians and given space to play. There is occasionally a touch too much downtime between the 'performing' moments of the show as the performers set up their elaborate Rube Golbderg works of art and minds start to wander, but for the majority of the show we are kept with our eyes and our imaginations glued to the sight of chairs dangling, dresses spinning and tinfoil fluttering. For anyone who wants to get away from the assault upon the senses that is the Edinburgh Fringe, this is the place to go.
