Piece For Person & Ghetto Blaster (Nicola Gunn, Dance Massive)

The title of choreographer Jo Lloyd and performer Nicola Gunn's Piece For Person & Ghetto Blaster could hardly be more appropriate, and not just because this show does exactly what it says on the tin. Much like its content, the deceptively utilitarian name of this production belies the level of whip-smart, intricate sophistication at its core. It's a bright, brilliant and bravely unbuttoned joyride, probing the nature of self-image and subjective uncertainty in the face of that most essential of moral conundrums: what defines the difference between right and wrong?

Such weighty philosophical ponderings are the stock and trade of avant-garde dance-theatre, but arguably the greatest revelation of Piece For Person & Ghetto Blaster is the accessible tone with which these ideas are unpacked. For starters, its inspiration comes from an experience of Gunn's that is itself almost comical in its oddness. While jogging along a canal in Ghent, Belgium, she came across a man with two small children throwing stones into the water. After a few moments, Gunn realised that the man was hurling these projectiles at a sitting duck - quite literally - which refused to abandon a nest full of eggs.

In that moment, a crystal clear ethical judgement seemed inarguable to Gunn: the man assailing this defenceless animal was in the wrong. However, her choice to intervene sparked a domino effect of questioning doubt that would prove both a nagging source of consternation and a bountiful supply of material for her work as an artist.

Gunn's examination of this encounter becomes an unrestrained, meandering stream of consciousness, constantly digressing onto unexpected tangents. For example, setting the scene as Belgium unleashes several minutes of trivia about British actor David Suchet's portrayal of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective (often mistaken for French, we're told) Hercule Poirot. These off-piste diversions are thoroughly entertaining and dripping with wit, wry humour and irresistible charisma, but it's the undertow of psychological truth they uncover that reveal these random musings as utterly crucial to the piece. It becomes clear that we are being offered an unfiltered window into Gunn's subconscious, with all its zigzagging, pin-balling mechanics on show as the canal altercation is processed and analysed.

Lloyd's choreography is similarly built. The small, fidgety, unconscious gestures that accompany deep thought are allowed to explode into wild, gloriously hell-bent gesticulations, freed from the inhibiting straitjacket of public niceties that keep our bodies in check day to day. All the social constraints that dictate how we project ourselves to the outside world - both physically and mentally - are gone, leaving just the baser instincts; all thrusting hips, spread-eagled legs, dragged-bottoms and inelegant angles.

Remarkably, this does not devolve the piece into something uncomfortably crass but rather disarms the audience with its devil-may-care rejection of the pretentiousness common in contemporary dance. It's an inspired slight of hand, as Gunn's daffy comedy and Lloyd's freewheeling moves entertain us while at the same time communicating so lucidly a serious and universal subtext. In much the same way, Gunn's performance is a feat of quietly jaw-dropping dexterity, as the constantly shifting kaleidoscope of choreography never once intrudes on the easy, affable delivery of the text.

A wondrously OTT finale suddenly pulls the work wholesale into the realm of total surrealism. It's one final, cheeky send-up of theatrical pomposity and an ideal cadence for a piece that is as much about challenging its own nature as it is about exploring innate human truths.

Malthouse Theatre presents Piece For Person And Ghetto Blaster to Mar 26, part of Dance Massive.