Edinburgh Fringe Review: Horizon Showcase - Tom
Zoo Southside ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Identities are fluid, energies high and anything possible in Tom, a darkly voyeuristic encounter with music-duo Bullyache and their dancers.
Drag, pop, rave and Tik Tok all influence this exploration of working-class gender identity, power and survival, based very loosely on the Greek myth of Orpheus, musician and seer.
Set in ‘a holding room’ where participants linger as a pageant is about to begin, it’s a dark, dystopian world the six performers draw us into, each loitering in the shadows like ghosts of the Weimar Republic until their cue.
Wasted figures with painted faces and bedecked in tawdry attire, they twist, leap, love and fight against a backdrop of torn drapes and a dreich misty skyline.
As an electronic soundtrack, haunted by indecipherable vocals, booms out, dance, circus and gymnastics all combine in Courtney Deyn and Jacob Samuel’s robustly directed choreography.
With the performers drawing on their own life experiences (there’s a world champion gymnast, a legendary Voguer, a ballroom dancer and a B-boy) it’s personal and multiple narratives weave and clash.
If those multiple narratives don’t always meld as easily as they might (a lengthy strobe sequence outstays its welcome and there are moments when the pace falters), it’s never enough to distract from what is a curiously hypnotic piece.
Sometimes, you just have to loose yourself in the experience and succumb to the rhythm. This is one of those occasions.
Until August 27, 6.25pm
Credit: Líam Rudden Media