Ockham's Razor's Tipping Point at the Platform Theatre was beautiful

Once again I have Twitter to thank for alerting me to this event and it would have been something of a disaster if I had missed it. I had seen Ockham's Razor twice previously, both times at the Rose Theatre in Kingston (where I live) and had loved them. This time they were performing at the Platform Theatre, part of the Central Saint Martins complex which dominates the view from my office window; the hardest part of the journey there is waiting for a lift down from the seventh floor.

It is only a two minute walk to the theatre unless you take a detour like I did. I had to eat something somewhere and nothing locally appealed to me that much so I walked a mile east to Angel Islington where there was a Wagamama and then a mile back again. Those steps were good for my daily count too.

The stage for Tipping Point was set (mostly) in the round and so it was easy for me to find a seat in one of the four front-rows. I went for one in a corner to get the longer view alone a diagonal.

It was one piece in several sections, running for a total of around 75 minutes without a break. Each piece used beams and used them in several different ways.

The mood was set with the first piece in which a beam full of sand (or something similar) was used to slowly draw a circle that defined the field of play. This boundary was treated with reverence by the performers who frequently had to pull themselves up short to avoid crossing it. Another game they played was to avoid the beams as they swung from their supports.

The performance was structured with a series of set pieces, usually with just one or two performers, exploring one specific aspect of working with beams and the ranges of movement that they allow.  These pieces were connected by group pieces that rearranged the beams and played a game with them.

The ending mirrored the opening with a suspended beam again spilling sand but this time it was allowed to swing to make a Spirograph like pattern.

Tipping Point was much as I expected (and hoped) with the movement being a combination of impressive circus skills and beautiful dance set to lovely music. It was gorgeous to watch and I was captivated by it throughout.

Then things got even better with the announcement that there would be a Q&A session with all the performers and the other creatives involved in Ockham's Razor's which obviously I stayed on for. This was very insightful in understanding how they approach their work. It all starts with the apparatus and each of their works has deliberately used different thinks. They then explore the physical capabilities of the apparatus and themselves to see what they can do. This creates the pieces of movement that are then put together to create the performance.

In this case the choice of beams also dictated the shape of the stage, a circle, and suggested that it be performed in the round. That information came in part from a response to my question. I had asked about the staging as the first time that I saw them we were able to walk around the apparatus and the second was presented in standard theatre mode. They liked the walk around mode, as did I, but that limited the number of people they could admit and the economics are always a consideration. We both agreed that performing in the round was a good compromise.

The other main insight was the use of the word "ritual" in response to another question. That helped to make sense of both their response to the sand boundary of the performance area and the way that they shared chalk powder between the main set pieces.

Ockham's Razor are a unique company and what they do is very wonderful.

Ockham's Razor return to the Rose Theatre for another magical show

Having caught Ockham's Razor almost by accident on their previous on their previous visit to the Rose Theatre I was quick to book to see them on their return.

I would have been even quicker if not for the poor way that the Rose advertises shows that are not its own productions. All there was on the website was a thumbnail picture and the title "Triple Bill" and the emails were much the same. On my initial scan I missed the show and I think it was only thanks to a comment on Twitter that I learned that this was Ockham's Razor and so was a show that I had to see.

They were only playing for a few nights and so I found myself going on a Monday evening, not a usual theatre night. I worked at home that day (often a good idea on a Monday after the pub quiz on Sunday) and that made it an easy walk in to town for the evening show. I timed my walk to get there just before the show started as experience had taught me that there was no point trying to get a drink there beforehand as the queues are too long and the bar staff too few. Something else the Rose had to fix.

I do not understand the pricing policy at the Rose, or even who decides it, but at £10 my seat in my favoured Centre Stalls Row A (47) was a steal. I would not have thought twice at paying double that and would not have had to think for too long to pay more than that.

The arrangements were very different this time. Previously they had performed in the round with the audience free to roam and while that added to the excitement they worked just as well on a traditional stage. There was not a lot on that stage, just their equipment and that was not very substantial.

Ockham's Razor do something unique, as far as I am aware, in producing shows that combine gymnastic skills with the beauty of dance and the structure of story-telling.

The opening piece, Arc, typified all of this. It was performed on a grid suspended above the stage and to make things harder the grid swung and spun. The movement was smooth and balletic rather than energetic and circus-like. The story of the three people stuck together had moments of tension, tenderness and humour - I loved the little section where they played "It".

The photograph was taken at the start of the second half with the piece Every Action that used robes to connect four people. In the simplest form one person going up meant another one coming down. The actions were more complex than that and the four performers moved together in interesting and clever ways.

The final piece was a duet on a trapeze like metal frame. Despite the name, Memento Mori (The Dance of Death) this was a slow and gentle piece where the two people flowed around and over each other beautifully.

The three pieces were quite different in the mood they created and in the equipment they used which all added to the interest and entertainment. I am still not sure how to categorise Ockham's Razor so I will just settle for saying that it is physically clever, visually exciting and thoroughly entertaining.

Knee Deep at the Riverside (circus with heart)

Knee Deep is not the sort of show that would normally attract me as it sounded like a circus act and I do not do circuses (normally). This one though came with some good reviews, it was on at possibly my favourite venue, the Riverside Studios besides the river at Hammersmith, and I had a free Friday evening when I would be passing anyway.

Riverside Studio 2 was set up in the square, not unlike a boxing ring without the ropes, and despite a slow start I was able to secure one of the last front row seats. The down side of that was that I had one of the Riverside staff just in front of me guiding people to their seats and so I was unable to take any photographs of the stage and have had to make-do with official photos gleaned from the web.

Knee Deep are a circus act and the two pictures that I have chosen are typical of what they do. The stunts, tricks and routines that they performed were all technically excellent, who would have guessed that one small woman could lift three bigger men?, and they were presented with great grace, tenderness and heart.

The music that came with it growled and bounced in to unfamiliar territory; Portishead's Third was the closest comparison that I could think of. There was a blast of recognisable music from fellow Australian Nick Cave at the end but that was just to see us out.

Knee Deep was a beautiful experience that while firmly rooted in the circus successfully rose above the merely technical proficient by adding a lot of heart.

Not Until We Are Lost at the Rose Theatre (artistic aerial excellence)

I love performances that are different and have been critical of the Rose Theatre in Kingston for playing it safe with well know plays. So it was a double delight to see something very unusual and to see it at the Rose.

Not Until We Are Lost, by Ockham's Razor, is hard to classify. Classification was not necessary to enjoy it but it does help to explain what it was to other people. I have opted to use the tags "dance" and "circus" though it was definitely more at the dance end of that spectrum.

The performance used two sets of apparatus, a perspex tower and a climbing frame with a section of vertical bars that could swing freely.

The five performers used circus skills to climb, slide, crawl and jump on the apparatus, which obviously required a good deal of technical skills.

What they produced with those skills was dance in that it was the movements and the shapes that were important, not the technical skills used to make them.

Some of the shapes and movements were pleasingly geometric and others told a silent story, and this meant that the performers had to act too. In one of the most memorable scenes one of the ladies was very unhappy and it took a lot of comforting from two of the men to cheer her up. This comforting involved climbing over her, swinging with her and throwing her between them.

The staging was very unusual too. The main apparatus was erected in the Pit, several rows of seats were removed to make way for it, and the tower was on the stage. We, the audience, stood throughout the performance (some seats made from rolled-up cardboard were provided for the less able) and were encouraged to move around during the performance.

It was a brilliant idea and I moved almost constantly to get different perspective on the performance.

There was a lot about the show that was unusual and clever. It was also very good.

Not for the first time this year I found myself mesmerised by people slowly sliding down to the accompaniment of minimalist music.

The show consisted of a series of episodes alternating between the pieces of apparatus, with varying numbers of performers and with different music. This frequent change kept my engagement fresh though, to be perfectly honest, most of these scenes I could have watched for much longer before any thought of boredom, or even satisfaction, crept in.

I am still not entirely certain what Not Until We Are Lost is but I am absolutely certain that I loved every minute of it. Here's hoping that the Rose also liked it and we get more shows like this, assuming there is anything else like it anywhere.

{Event(Dimension);} at Jacksons Lane

I fancied seeing something a little unusual and {Event(Dimension);} by The Sugar Beast Circus was certainly that.

Jacksons Lane was the venue for the evening which was not much of a surprise given that everything that I've seen there has been on the weird side of usual in a nice and stimulating way.

{Event(Dimension);} takes its theme from the worlds of Newtonian and Quantum physics. The first we all learnt at school and explains why apples fall and planets orbit whereas the regarding the second Richard Feynman, one of its greatest teachers, famously said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics".

The fun starts when you collect your ticket at the box office and are given a "0" or a "1" label to wear. Come show-time the "0"s and "1"s are led in different directions.

I was led in to the main theatre, a little smaller than I remembered it, where three identically dressed and wigged girls were miming to electronic music with some animations playing on the screen at the back of the stage.

Once we were all settled the story began. The miming continued and all the clues were given to us through written titles included in the animation.

There followed a series of short scenes, or acts, where we were given the introduction and then one, two or three identical circus girls would perform with ropes, hoops, balloons or throwing balls.

The circus acts were arty rather than technical, these were dancers giving their interpretations of the themes and the music rather than performers trying to impress us with their skills.

After half an hour or so it ended and the surprise came. We were led around the back of the stage, along narrow corridors and then in to what I realised was the other half of the theatre that we had just left, the two sides being divided by a black curtain.

The music started and one of the pennies dropped. There were two shows performed in parallel to the same music.

And as we sometimes had three girls on our stage it was obvious that there were more of them than I first thought.

The second half (or the first half if you were a "1") was not noticeably that different in format and feel to the first though light seemed to be more of a theme here (the girls wore spectral helmets for some of the scenes) whereas gravity had been prominent before (throwing, climbing, falling, etc.)

There was an after performance chat that did little to illuminate, sometimes artists can be just as self referential as philosophers are, and with the sort of questions that a guest on the Graham Norton show would have thought were a little easy we were never going to learn very much

I managed to grab a few words with the show's main creator, Geneva Foster Gluck, after the event but that merely lessened the connection in my mind between quantum physics and the performance. Not that that mattered at all, the show could be appreciated for what it is without needing to understand what inspired it.

At the core of the show is a clever (but not too clever) device to present two stories in parallel and each act within those stories is entertaining and sufficiently unusual to be stimulating too. All boxes ticked.

Cirque du Soleil's Totem at the Royal Albert Hall

I was obviously aware of Cirque du Soleil but somehow had not managed to get to a show before so when a ticket offer came up at work I took the opportunity.

Somehow I had also managed to miss the Royal Albert Hall since Paul Weller's Live Wood tour way back in 1993 so this was also an opportunity to renew acquaintances.

It was an after work event so the first priority was to find some food. The Hoop and Toy was far too busy, and the beer was not up to much either, so I headed round the corner to Sole Luna for an imaginative choice of a Fiorentina Pizza and a glass of wine that did the job.

Queen Victoria inconveniently built the Royal Albert Hall as some distance from any tube station so it was a lazy shuttle bus from South Ken to the venue that was already surrounded by then as people queued up at the various entrances that ring the building.

I had completely forgotten what the RAH looked like from the inside so I took a photo of it!

The RAH was the steep sides of an opera house with some stall seating sweeping towards the middle where the centre is hollowed out according to the needs of the show. This night it was a high stage for circus.

Clustered almost randomly around the stage were some other seats, just normal chairs placed there to fill the gaps, and I was in one of those with a good close-up view of the performance.

The little that I knew about Cirque du Soleil was that it was an old circus (sans animals) with a lot of emphasis on the presentation. Brash Las Vegas comes to genteel Knigtsbridge.

And that's rather what we got.

The Totem website makes claims that it was inspired by founding myths and traces the journey of the human species from its original amphibian state to its ultimate desire to fly but while that may have been the excuse for the linking pieces and some of the costumes the theme was, in all honesty, irrelevant to the proceedings.

The series of acts that we presented with were mostly familiar circus acts delivered with some style.

Some of the acts were more familiar than other and despite not having seen many circus acts before I was surprised at just home familiar they were. So while they were done well there was little to get excited about with the Chinese unicyclists, balancing pole or the foot jugglers. They all lacked the wow factor.

The second half was a lot better for me and three acts really stood out. First there were the roller skaters spinning quickly and wildly within a small circle and then the juggler who started normally but then moved in to an inverted cone and the act transformed in to something really special.

Last up was the Russian Bar, a cross between a trampoline and a balancing act that threw the performers high in to the air expecting them to land on a bendy plank. Somehow they did to the surprise and delight of an enthralled audience.

The whiz-bang finished helped to compensate for some of the formulaic acts that had gone before and lifted the evened overall from average to good. But not quite good enough to make me think about going back to see it again.