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FringeReview Scotland 2024

RHYZE TO MORPH

Nomoss

Genre: Outdoor and Promenade

Venue: Surge Festival

Festival:


Low Down

There is a disturbing white mushroom like creature about to burst through its cocoon and we have come along to observe this birthing. Principally with the use of vocals and guitar, slowly and with care, this creature emerges into our sunshine and through movement calls us to consider life as we sensorily experience it.

Review

A collection of us assemble in witness to the birthing of a mushroom like creature within Ramshorn’s Graveyard. Starting with voice and music to accompany that growth, our principal physical performer demonstrates quite a vast array of solo balance and awkwardly sore looking poses as the rise to be begins from within a mushroom shaped cloth until they release themselves from that prism.

It is a focus on that experience, of experiencing the new and the world outside that appears to be a focus.  As this new person emerges to test the environment into which it has arrived, it writhes, tests its own balance and connects with us through movement and the sense of exploration. With the backdrop of a musical accompaniment which does bring much of the emotionally vocal interpretation of the birthing it effectively draws us into the world of the disconcerting.

And there were, at times some elements of this which were, to an extent, quite challenging. There is nothing unreasonable about being in a place where there are challenges but some of it became a little uncomfortable: the moans and grunts, the release of fluid at one point form within the mushroom suggesting a physicality which made things feel odd. In a mixed age ranged audience that felt like the knowledgeable was bringing too much to the interpretation – perhaps, perhaps not – within our audience demographic.

The music verged on the hypnotic as it perfectly encompassed the movement and the rhythm of this strange spectacle. It was one of the elements I like the most. It felt connected and once the creature had emerged, quite mellow and dramatic. The discordance between both of those emotions pitched for us all to engage with.  Other theatre arts were never going to compete with the backdrop and significance of performing in a graveyard with the symbolism of a fungus growth within a place of little human growth. Perhaps this was the exact point, and it was pitched perfectly. I am unsure but I did leave with questions around existence which felt like the point. I also questioned the collective community of the audience as it was eclectic, mixed and very varied which must be a positive for this type of work – that it can attract a varied and mixed group of people happy for a challenge.

Published