Stockholm

Published Tuesday 25 September 2007 at 13:35 by Roger Malone

Take two lovers, stick in the needles and pins of distrust and desire, and you are on course for Stockholm - their holiday destination and the perfect metaphor for a relationship that is a light and dark polarity of emotions.

Kali and Todd share the sort of obsessive intensity that oscillates between black despair and blazing euphoria.

Bryony Lavery’s script is lean and powerful, probing into the zone of Stockholm Syndrome, the bond between perceived victim and aggressor. In a relationship both bitter and beautiful, the characters intertwine desire and recrimination with a potent self-destruct power.

As Kali and Todd, Georgina Lamb and Samuel James give outstanding and physically demanding performances. The sheer intensity of love/lust is an

explosive treadwheel that builds, erupts, is absolved in a sea of forgiveness and remorse and then repeats itself.

Stockholm is, however, not without its moments of comedy. Take Todd, the recipient of opportune oral sex on the staircase, breathlessly attempting to describe the decor.

The play slips into eye-catchingly stylised mode with ingeniously choreographed and excellently executed balletic movements - physical highlights in an impressive production.

An erotic sado-masochistic dance with kitchen knives and forks signals the obsessive, ultimately destructive intensity of this relationship. A later fight sequence is brilliantly executed as Kali’s jealousy explodes into

violence. When she ultimately subsides foetal-like with remorse, it is a scene delivered with heart wrenching poignancy. The route to forgiveness and setting the cycle spinning once more is via a bed suspended above the stage at a disconcertingly acute angle.

This co-production is buoyant with the thought provoking energetic style Frantic Assembly has rightly carved a reputation for.