The Stage

I Am Falling

Published Thursday 10 January 2008 at 12:10 by Lyndsey Winship

The epic is overrated. Forty minutes is all you need to make a memorable piece of theatre, as succinctly demonstrated by director Carrie Cracknell (The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents) in her latest piece, I Am Falling.

I Am Falling hinges on a sliver of a story, but it’s a sliver that pierces and shatters, a single incident that illuminates potency of love, in all its perfect, ecstatic and destructive power.

A middle-aged man (Simon Molloy) recalls his parents’ marriage. It comes in fragments, an unfolding mystery, while dancer/performers Petra Soor and Ben Duke give shape to his memories. The intention of this piece is to find an equal balance of text and movement, and while the strength of the show lies in its pacing and storytelling, the movement gives essential breathing space - and thinking space - to the narrative.

Choreographer Anna Williams, a former dancer with Ricochet who has recently worked with Aletta Collins at Opera North, meets the challenge of working within the confined space of the tiny Gate stage by purposefully mining the same seam of movement over and over. The dancers’ bodies are repeatedly thrust together and repelled, intertwined then released, falling and being caught, using their shared momentum to propel each other across the stage and back in a continuous thread of movement - two souls melded into one freewheeling physical being.

The skill of the cast is revealed in tiny moments of timing or inflection and the atmosphere is intimate, with Katharine Williams’ lighting particularly effective. This is a complex reflection on love and its consequences expressed in the most economic terms, and all the better for it.