Potato Country @ Dance Base

We may be an unhappy lot but our unhappiness fits us well. Potato Country  positively revels in this Northern European angst. The show depicts our awkward, longing state of mind and makes fun of it. Dourness becomes a source of humour.

The simplest music, a few notes on an accordion, combine with words, gestures and dance to relate snippets of stories and aspects of character. Dissonant and non-linear fragments, thanks to the wonderful invention of director and troupe, develop into a satisfying whole.

The awkward and unconventional jerks and lunges of the dance of life, like hens doing ballet, are executed with such skill that they become pleasant, just as banal conversations become poetry in the mouths of the performers. There is no preaching and the repetitive lives of our potato growing and eating ancestors are not postulated as any more edifying or meaningful than our own rituals of grooming and shopping.

At one point we seem to be heading towards some kind of resolution and achievement of grace but the performers lurch away from this back into the world of obstacles and missed matches. Dance Base's festival offer of another ticket to any dissatisfied punter oodles with confidence and with shows like Potato Country, it's fully justified.