Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Low Down
Soft Spot is a circus duet for a juggler, a handstand artist, wooden planks and 300 wine glasses. Everyone has held a wine glass. Everyone has broken one. From childhood curiosity to adult caution, we share a relationship with this fragile everyday object. On stage, two artists carefully manipulate, stack and balance a delicate landscape, risking collapse at any moment. The glass becomes partner, obstacle and quiet threat – demanding precision and trust between performers. Each action carries tension; each near-collapse asks what might happen next. Unexpected outcomes reveal a playful, precise exploration of our fragile world.
Review
Soft Spot is a delicate and sure-footed work from Swedish duo OLO Company. A table, tray-like planks, and carefully stacked wine glasses accompany the couple on stage as they explore trust, play, fragility, and how you respond when something breaks. It’s an intriguing mix of care and recklessness, Stina Otterström and Arttu Lahtinen are often still but in the most precarious of positions- Otterström will handstand at each individual glass in turn as Lahtinen threads them around her, she will pick up the stems between her toes, Lahtinen will slide the glasses from one end of the plank to another testing gravity.
The performance moves between balance and play- sometimes one will hold out a hand to the other, making a suggestion towards precarious action. At times they look like a long-term couple who’ve found the perfect game to keep boredom away at home. How far can they bend their bodies around the glass? What shapes can they make before everything breaks? When a glass does shatter Otterström looks up guiltily but still smiling. Lahtinen will smile back as he brings out a broom. There is an assuredness to this performance that keeps the audience confident even as the stakes rise and shards appear.
And the stakes do rise in well-judged increments throughout the performance. You learn to trust that they know where they are going, then gasp softly when you realise they are taking another step further. For the audience too, it becomes an act of focusing on the minute. Halfway through this show I realised the whole audience was looking at one glass at one point on the stage, concentrating on the position of a foot, a toe. As the performance goes on, laughs come in a little ahead of the movement itself, we have understood and we are also now there, watching and trusting and daring just a little. You will be with Lahtinen as he takes a breath out before a set piece, your own breathing will slow and then catch.
The wine glass is a lovely symbol for the fragility, care, beauty and ordinariness of the everyday. As Otterström passes a wineglass over with her foot, her leg gracefully crossing her body from upside down, they could be a couple doing the dishes. Glass imposes a thoughtfulness through all their movements, echoes of the shape are repeated in their movements of still standing or wine-bowl rounded arms, a soft right-angle with leg and foot. In one sequence all you can see of Otterström is her hands rounded in front of Lahtinen’s standing frame. The soundtrack composed by Mika Forsling for this piece is such a boon for this focus. They spent a day recording every sound you could make with wine glasses and we hear them on the soundtrack. Someone playing water glasses, tinkles, spirals, rhythmic clunks and clashes. Shifts in emotion tone are met by the music at each turn. Lovely beats come in for some of the high stakes sequences. In composition and choreography this piece expands throughout with its theme that could have narrowed in less skilful hands. There is only one sequence before the denouement where I feel the pace flagging slightly. The pair create such precariousness on stage that there is a brief return to accomplished but safer looking movements before the denouement. This retreat needs to be signposted as such (maybe taking place seated, maybe a subtle switch to a low-key manner) or a way to keep the tension up higher needs to be found.
I found their quiet, playful way with intense focus deeply relaxing but came out to much chatter around me about how stressful it was watching a dance with the threat of broken glass. However it finds you, this is a thoughtful, sensitive and assured work that is so worth your time and trust.
