Consumer capitalism gets a dance and multimedia thrashing

Using a plethora of multimedia devices and inventive dance sets, Bristol based company, Precarious, show us that all is not well with the world in this monochrome nightmare of modern day consumerism.

We find ourselves in a dusty old factory that exists in a world where demand for commodity has fast become man's identity - where the need for conformity outweighs the reality and chips away at our individuality. Here we see the power of advertisement, here the body has commercial use, here nothing is fixed - it is simply replaced.

Precarious are virtuosos of the multimedia, magicians of light and sound. Images are created in mid-air, scenes float on plastic bags and bodies hang on meat hooks. Anything to hand is a canvas for the projector; haze, plastic bags, human bodies. Their physical style and ingenuity is on par with their technical. A dance involving a large table highlighted the company's diversity – able to fuse physical theatre, dance and a touch of acrobatics. When the two meet, accompanied by oppressive music and lighting, there are moments of sharp, dark and dizzying theatre.

The major issues with the production arise with the message. The pervading sentiment has been flogged in a fair few formats already. While the company are adept dancers, this tired rant is not fully held together by the acting and parts felt heavy handed. The result was little empathy with characters and a general audience isolation – the message adopts a somewhat smug and patronising tone. The subtext may have just been shouted at us as we left: Look at you! You're a cog in a machine! A cog in an orwellian-dystopia-neo-facist-machine for that matter. How does that make you feel? Stop buying iPhones from Tesco you slave to the man!'' Further more, it's rather a moot point. Most who venture to an arts festival are likely to be middle-class lefties who probably don't need to be told that mega-corporate conglomerates are doing the bad thing. The company is clearly in possession of visionary talent that could achieve something staggering. I eagerly await a production that deals with something a little more pertinent or a little more magical. So while not something to change the mind it is something to truly dazzle it for a while. [Alex Forsyth]