Game?

Published Tuesday 14 August 2007 at 10:40 by William McEvoy

Tangled Feet are gaining quite a reputation for comedy physical theatre and Game? will only add to it. This is a dinner party with a difference, exploring male rivalry and female flirtatiousness in a sometimes explosive, sometimes delicately witty combination of choreography, special effects and clever writing.

When a conventional and uptight young couple, both middle-class professionals, invite their new neighbours around, they get more than they bargained for. James is a historian, and his girlfriend a professional flirt who uses sexual innuendo to divert him from popping the question. The two men from each couple immediately start sizing each other up.

Tangled Feet use highly energetic and often hilarious set-pieces to convey the tensions, rivalries and attractions the couples experience. It’s observant about status anxiety and social rules, insights often translated into effective physical ensemble work. For Tangled Feet, theatre is a contact sport. The men wrestle, chairs are rotated in unison, one character ends up mummified in sellotape.

The work has an anarchic edge and the distinctive stamp of a company who clearly know where they are going. The show is the product of much hard work and imagination, suggesting that Tangled Feet will continue to go from strength to strength.