More of an installation than a narrative work, or even a collection of set pieces, My Name is B demonstrates the cyclical and entropic artifice of celebrity, and the destructive fallacy of living as a Persona at the expense of Self. The 53-minute performance (we are told the running time repeatedly in the rhythmic opening sequence) draws on both the macabre and compelling story of The Red Shoes and on Freudian theories of identity to take us through the stratified superego, ego, and id of media personality ‘B’ on the eve of her 21st birthday.

The only set and illumination are four fluorescent striplights that line the traverse performance space like a runway, or the fashion catwalk it references, and a live video screen that gives the audience an almost 360° view of proceedings, making the rudimentary basement space of CPT seem all the more stark; equal parts exposed and confining, much like the hospital gowns and red heels the four performers don for most of the experience.

Company B are well balanced, a visually appealing mix of physical types, each with their own brand of embodied bathos and humour. The piece felt a little out of place in this venue: CPT is generally home to strong narratives and conversation-through-performance and My Name Is B felt like it would be far better suited to a gallery or festival, where onlookers could pass through and keep returning. Being seated throughout the intense process of B’s decline was a confrontational choice, forcing us to question our own role as observers and consumers of the media circus that extinguishes so many public lights. I felt I would better appreciate it if I had been drawn back to it, passing through every circle of descent, or if there had been the option to walk away – making the conflict of staying so much more fraught, the observer so much more complicit. As a parade of the objects of scopophilia My Name Is B has some heft, but situated somewhere more appropriate, responding to a site, presented to an audience less constrained and conventional than those seated in a theatre, it could be far more resonant.