Why Don't You Dance @ The Space

For a very young company, Bending Angels have risen to the challenge of the Fringe superbly. Taking note of contemporary theatre's diverse influences - there is a spot of physical theatre, imaginative use of minimal stage, a narrator who relentlessly deconstructs the protagonist's story - they take a small tragedy and movingly journey towards a tiny redemption.

Appropriately for a tale that delves into the subconscious to seek meaning, Why Don't You Dance is a series of loosely connected scenes, each one bringing the heroine back to her grief and the relief that she refuses to accept. As a study of late adulescence, it captures the tentative hopes and self-conscious posturing: a train morphs into a classroom, a father rejects his daughter twice, and student anxieties about death, childhood and family are evoked through some strong performances.

By rejecting a strictly chronologically narrative, and breaking down each scene with thoughtful analysis, the script avoids cliche, winking seriously at the audience without undermining its sincerity. Subtle use of lighting transform the blank stage into a laboratory of human emotion, short scenarios played out to illustrate how accidental meetings can change lives - Orphelia is rescued from her nunnery in a brief vignette - or how truth can lie beneath the facts.

Why Don't You Dance is charming and sensitive: compassionate and nuanced, it respects both the characters and the audience's intelligence.