Plastic is a fusion of dance, monologue, film and sound which starts at a corrugated iron door. The queuing audience is asked to gather round watching a gap at the bottom filled by two large jars of pickled onions. A pair of feet in shoes and manicured hands remove the jars and the door rolls up, revealing a tunnel-like space beyond.

Beckoned inside, men and women are separated and led on different journeys - to merge again, it transpires, in a physical re-enactment of the central theme. There's a well-executed dance routine from Gemma Donohue and Sara Reyhani wearing West-meets-East black and white costumes, fluid against the brick walls of the storage space.

Plastic is visually striking in costume, multimedia and setting. It is a site-specific piece which exploits spaces effectively. The audience is drawn in, integrated in scenario after scenario, led down a spiral staircase - a journey echoed in video, which replays the performers making the descent, passing and repassing each other. Performers mingle and beckon, encouraging their guests (clients?) to inspect a house-like installation as an interested visitor to a modern art museum.

In the fourth space, the performer puts shoes into carefully placed jars, incarcerating stilettos, pointes and court shoes within vacuums. Returning to the starting space, it is now littered with shoes in a poignant echo of the earlier sequence. The design is stark and exact; black-and-white costumes and installations with bursts of Kath Kidston-esque florals mark the polarities of gender certainty which are then exploited - a urinal has a floral interior; performer Ali Amadi's black leather jacket is reversed to reveal a floral lining in the same pattern.

The spoken word is sporadic but powerful: 'Can I be your wife? Can I be your husband?' Recorded speech is haunting - a passage on the effects of Botox on vaginismus; a conversation with different people 'Are you happy to have your sexual organs removed? Sign here please.'

What it's about is not always clear. The programme says that it concerns 'the traffic between the two sexes in the world capital of cosmetic surgery'. A viewer might find it hard to be that specific, but the piece is certainly provocative and challenging and although lacking in explanation, the experience is difficult to forget. It's a powerful exploration of form and performance.

Cast Credits: (performers alpha order): Ali Amadi. Yasmin Bodalbhai. Gemma Donohue. Sara Reyhani.

Company Credits: Choreographers - Gemma Donohue, Sara Reyhani. Writer/Director - Mehrdad Seyf. Associate Director (Costume) - Leslie Travers. Spatial Designer - Torange Khonsari (Public Works). Lighting Designer - Guy Kornetzki (Elektra Lighting Ltd). Film Artist - Meika Dresenkamp. Composers - Squint / Opera / Music. Artistic Director - Avand Dashtaray. Technical Operator - uncredited. Producer - uncredited. Company - 30 Bird. Website - www.30birdproductions.org.

END

(c) Ruth Stanley 2008

reviewed on Saturday 2 August 2008 at 20:00pm performance / Undergrand @ Pleasance Courtyard

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com