Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Exploring death – but with some laughs thrown in
DEATH Trap is a darkly funny dance comedy that traverses the turbulent journey between life and death. If you saw Rambert’s fabulous Peaky Blinders tour, then this is the next chance to see the company’s dancers in director Ben Duke’s bittersweet two-part show.
At the start a humorous fake public announcement about mobile phone use immediately alerts the audience that something unusual is about to start.
Cerberus is the first dance, loosely based on the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, and we watch Aishwarya traverse the stage held by the thread of life – a thick rope – until she breaks free. She disappears – but is she dead or has she merely exited stage left, as we are helpfully told?
She is followed by a stream of people heading the same way, a sometimes solemn, sometimes joyous black-clad funeral cortege whose synchronised movements are broken by occasional breakout dances.
Our Orpheus interrupts Aishwarya’s funeral, along with a futilely comic attempt – a child’s shrimping net – to stop the hordes coming behind her as they head towards death.
Instead he is persuaded to follow her and bring her back to life. With the thick rope wrapped all around him he begins a journey into a hazy Underworld peopled by half-glimpsed inhabitants.
It is mesmerishing, a gorgeous portrayal of myth and mortality, heightened by Caroline Jaya-Ratnam’s singing of Monteverdi’s Lamento della Ninfa.
Goat continues the theme of life and death in a story inspired by the music of Nina Simone and featuring such iconic songs as Feelings, Feeling Good and Ain’t Got No, I Got Life.
But this is no ancient mythological story thanks to Tom Rogers’ set and costume design which place Goat very much in a modern era of protest.
The comedy here comes from the presence of an intrusive TV presenter and his cameraman who interrupt a ritual ceremony to question the dancers on choreography. He struggles to explain such responses as “a metaphysical hunger for extinction” to a TV audience.
Fate – in a stunning solo – picks one member of the group to be the sacrificial Goat who dances himself to death to a litany of personal and global horrors.
The piece makes great use of Simone’s music, beautifully sung by Sheree DuBois accompanied by a live on-stage band, the lyrics and choreography embracing that liminal space between the two worlds.
Both Cerberus and Goat cover the dark topic of death, but with a blend of beauty and humour that also celebrates life. Thursday night’s opening in Bath ended to prolonged applause.
Death Trap finishes at the Theatre Royal Bath today. Call the box office on 01225 448844 or go online at