The lights go up on a mostly bare stage. In the back half of the stage there is a sheet of plastic being used as a cur­tain. It’s snagged on a table. As it rises a fig­ure becomes vis­ible over a mini­ature city­scape. The light bright­ens to reveal not a city­scape but a mess of pots and oth­er mater­i­als behind which the main char­ac­ter, the Maker, twitches and flut­ters. Ross McCor­mack mixes dance and clown­ing to bring this mad sci­ent­ist styled char­ac­ter to life. He’s hard­work­ing, obsessed, and slightly pathet­ic as he pat­ters around his work­shop. Usu­ally fid­gety, the moments of smooth move­ment and still­ness provide inter­est­ing con­trasts and fur­ther glimpses into this char­ac­ter. Two of his cre­ations join him on the stage. James Vu Ahn Pham and Emily Adams are locked togeth­er to start, their feet on each other’s hips. They move around like acrobats, con­stantly touch­ing and adjust­ing. It’s mes­mer­ising to watch. They are up on the table, then back down on the ground, then the Maker is flip­ping them round like toys. When they even­tu­ally part, they are like baby anim­als. Con­stantly sway­ing as if they can’t quite sup­port the weight of their bod­ies. Their faces are, not exactly vacant, but open to the world around them which they exper­i­ence neut­rally because they haven’t learned how to react to it yet. As they explore the Maker tries to manip­u­late them to per­form cer­tain acts. Hil­ari­ously for the audi­ence, this does not work as he plans. The final dance sec­tion is strong before the show ends with the Maker show­ing off his cre­ations again. Sound by Jason Wright, and light­ing by Nata­sha James is excel­lent.

This is mar­velous dance theatre.