Summerhall, Edinburgh – until 28 August 2022
Jo Fong is a dancer, director and choreographer. George Orange is a performance artist and clown. Both are middle-aged, and have decided that the rest of their lives start here.
Their highly engaging double-act begins with a great deal of direct involvement in seating the audience, and progresses through a series of apparently chaotic and rather brilliant dance and movement pieces. Exuding eccentricity, the pair do exactly as they please which consists of playing floor-filling tunes and dancing, or sitting down looking knackered, or ordering the audience into obedience.
The hour flies by in a series of low-tech, high impact set pieces. The audience plays a messy game of ping pong with many, many bats and balls. Fong and Orange compete to get higher than the other, including clambering up the raked seats. Orange contorts himself through a school chair. Fong deadfalls towards the front row at various angles, always caught at the last minute by Orange.
They sit nodding and looking smug to Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name Of’. They draw the audience into a riotous karoaoke version of Foreigner’s ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’. The show is both ludicrous and surprisingly moving, as their oblique approach explores the impact of getting older and wondering what’s next.
It ends in a remarkable moment of mass dancing as the audience descends on the stage, suddenly finding themselves at full emotional stretch thanks to an unashamed expression of personality from these two delightful performers.
