The premise is simply genius: to introduce to the audience an assortment of everyday folk, both through recorded video image and in the flesh. And it is truly delightful to see 'real’ people rather than the mortgage-less twenty-somethings who usually occupy the stage. But the show seems unclear on what to do with these people... Some simply 'are', some perform their party piece, and some seem to have had a performance thrust upon them.
Of course, a four-month old baby cannot fail to elicit a positive response. But I'm worried rather than entertained when a company member starts drawing on the (real?) mother as she breastfeeds, or when the baby is put in a box and dragged along the steep tiered stage. Another company member sticks locks of an angry young woman's long blond hair to a strip of sellotape crossing the stage. She ends up a sort of Shockheaded Peter in torn pink tights: a striking image-but she looks uncomfortable and it feels vaguely exploitative. Far better is her performance poem about homelessness: it's typical teenage ranting and posturing, out of place with the production style so far but distinctly ‘her'.
Other attempts to make a moral point – a white girl being blacked up on film while a black guy appears in white face on stage – also strike a false note. The company claim that the show 'creates a world which attempts to question the true value of living’. I'm not sure that it digs quite this deep, though it certainly offers something fresh and interesting.