Whelping Box

At first we only get glimpses illuminated by unusual lighting – a torch in a plastic bag on the end of stick, a technicolour tent suspended from above – of two men panting, running, slapping. They are tribal. Eventually, they shed their clothes, their primal regression continuing in opposition to the increasingly convoluted apparatus that they construct to test themselves; harnesses and ropes, blindfolds and shovels. Dialogue is minimal: a stage direction or command here, consent or congratulations offered from one to the other at the end of some feat of strength.

It would, or perhaps should, be easy to discredit as highfalutin' performance, all this nudity and fluid, the unease of an audience comprised only of a front row in the round. But then, as the performance progresses, it becomes apparent that Whelping Box possesses everything one could want or expect from theatre – there is comedy, black and slightly less so; emotion, portrayed with skill that does not require verbalisation; there is physicality, to the limits of endurance; and there is a lot said about humanity. These sequences represent or recall a nature documentary farce, the battles and 'entertainment' of the Coliseum, the realms and boundaries of sexuality, notions of submission and control – all painted with a broad brush that suggests more a concern with universality than brevity born of laziness or assumption.

You could, I suppose, view it as the woman next to me has – taking the general lack of traditional dialogue as an excuse to narrate the entire process to her partner, and anyone else within earshot – and think it reminiscent of “those raves we went to in the '90s”, but to do so would be doing the epic, historic vision of co-creators Lee Wilson, Mirabelle Wouters, Matt Prest and Clare Britton, a severe disservice.

Track 8, Performance Space, season finished