EDINBURGH 2011: BWW Reviews: FLAWLESS: INTERGALACTIC DREAM, Pleasance Grand, Aug 20 2011

Kevin Sherwin

I attended Flawless' latest Fringe show with what I imagine were standard expectations: that I was about to see a production featuring dazzling, pin-sharp choreography performed by extremely talented young men. And talented they undoubtedly are, but this hour is stuffed with superfluous and unnecessary narrative devices which do little more than waste time that could be better spent dancing, if you wouldn't mind, lads.

Something first appears awry when a flimsy space travel plot is initiated while the members are off-stage, and the audience is then 'treated' to an extended interlude in which hand-dancing instructions are displayed repeatedly; while it's mildly diverting to be waving your englovened hands around like you just don't care, it's not long before you start to wonder where exactly the performers have gone, and when they'll be coming back.

Eventually they do, but only to start a tiresome round of solo performances which involves a troupe member patronising the audience with the suggestion that they might have any input over which of four items (a trainer, hat, coat and glove) he chooses to dance in. The audience shouts, he cups his ear to make them shout louder, they do, and then he picks the item that he was always going to pick, since it relates to the next scene in the show.

After an invariably underwhelming routine (based around such dated themes as The Matrix, Michael Jackson and, bizarrely, Jim Carrey's The Mask), the item is returned (and the applause milked) and the next member summoned. The show is rounded off with a glimpse of what I came to see: the whole group, free of silly space travel gimmicks, simply dancing, but even then they barely break a sweat. An undoubted disappointment, then, and light years away from being flawless.