Fringe review: A COUPLE OF HUMANS, From Start to Finnish - Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Photo credit: Petra Tiihonen

As the audience walk in, two Finnish performers sit fully clothed on two stools on the stage. They greet you as you walk in.

The piece begins. No light changes, but they begin to take their garments off and instead put on layers of tights. First on their legs, and then on their torsos, covering themselves completely from head to toe to create a strange alien-like image.

They creatively use the tights, crawling into each others bodies quite literally. The dancers move very well together and clearly effortlessly which, of course, is more challenging than it appears.

The two dancers also create interesting images and silhouettes as a camera projects their shadows onto the back wall.

However, the choreography is quite repetitive and feels too literal for a piece which seems to be trying to push boundaries and find an ‘avant garde’ form. The piece is split into different stages of a romantic relationship and the choreography for each section represents this, not leaving much room for interpretation. The sound design lacks atmosphere and instead, with its repetitive warped effects, becomes quite distracting to the piece making it unsettling, but for the wrong reasons.

The dancers are good performers and interesting to watch but one is left unsure as to the overall intention of the piece - is it simply an installation of ‘A Couple of Humans’ as the title suggests? If so, then it succeeds in its ambitions, however if it aims to leave one thinking for longer after the show, here is its shortcoming.

*** Three stars

Reviewed by: Viv Williams

A Couple of Humans plays in the Main Hall at Summerhall at 4.05pm daily* until 20 August.