Above Me the Wide Blue Sky

 TNT

 

A slightly apprehensive Italian greyhound is led on stage by solo performer Laura Cubitt. The dog is, at first, reluctant to take to her fur-lined bed, but when she’s gently curled her legs (so slender they look as though they might break in a gust of wind) into a comfortable position, she sleeps, unconcerned, throughout the 45 minute performance as scudding clouds turn to angry orange swirls and the once blue skies turn dull, dead grey all around her.

Fevered Sleep’s latest production (it’s not really a play) is a long list of life-enhancing imagery, relating predominantly to the natural world of birds and trees, dogs and foxes, cows and beaches, which a relaxed Cubitt relates from a central square of raised, polar paving dotted with lights which dim and flair, bathed in evocative sounds and surrounded by shifting skies projected on wraparound overhead screens.

Each mini moment lives briefly in the present – but then the mood changes, and as Cubitt looks back at a happy childhood, it becomes a matter of what there used to be but is no longer as she works backwards through the same, less embellished, list.

But one gets the idea long before she’s returned to her starting point, and what starts off as restful becomes tedious. The silent Italian greyhound with her appealing eyes and fragile limbs – be careful how you treat me - says it all just as eloquently and in far less time.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
0207 922 2922
Tube | Southwark / Waterloo
Until 28th March £19.50
youngvic.org