Durham Fringe Festival 2026
Thresholds
BrainSoup Collective
Genre: Absurd Theatre, Theatre, Theatrical Storytelling
Venue: Fellows' Garden, Durham Castle
Festival: Durham Fringe Festival
Low Down
The world has ended. It’s a desolate wasteland of scorched earth and damaged relics with memories of the past. In these ruins three lost souls are caught in a stand-off. How did they get here? And how will this end? All we know is one is holding a banana, another a lightbulb, and the last a fork. Here life persists in light of the calamity, but will we make it through the night? Join BrainSoup Collective as they explore these Thresholds through movement, music, clowning, and voice. It certainly won’t be what you expect, in a good way.
Review
BrainSoup Collective aren’t interested in doing what you expect. What makes this work so refreshing is that it trusts you to do some of the heavy lifting. This is abstract theatre in the best sense, and if you’re thinking of Waiting for Godot, you’re onto something. Like Beckett, BrainSoup explores meaning through what’s absurd and tangible.
The banana isn’t a plot device that gets explained away. The lightbulb doesn’t suddenly become a metaphor you’re supposed to nod along with. Instead, the company leads you down narrative paths that unspool and you’re left to make sense of what you’ve witnessed. It’s a fascinating journey nowhere, and somehow that’s exactly where you want to be. There’s something almost spiritual about what unfolds here: as if you’re watching these three souls navigate not just this wasteland, but a passage between worlds, a journey towards the next life rendered through objects and movement that refuse easy meaning.
The movement, music, and voice work all build something genuinely quirky and funny without ever descending into chaos. What emerges is theatre that respects its audience enough to let them decide what it all means. You can feel that respect in how the audience engages with the work. There are genuine laughs at precisely the right moments. Some will find it marvellous for that very reason. Others might find it frustrating. Either way, you won’t be bored, and you won’t forget it.
The writing itself demands something unusual from the performers: the ability to play with intention whilst delivering material that deliberately resists neat interpretation. There’s a specificity to how these three characters orbit one another that gives weight to the strangeness. The choice to strip everything back to essentials like Beckett means there’s nowhere to hide, which is both the point and the challenge. Everything depends on the performers’ commitment, and that’s precisely what you get.
This is the kind of work that reminds you why the Fringe matters. BrainSoup Collective takes a genuine swing here, and even if abstract theatre isn’t your default setting, it’s worth stepping into their world. You’ll come out with questions, and that’s exactly the point. In a landscape where so much theatre rushes to explain itself, this feels genuinely bold.
