6.0: How Heap & Pebble Took on the World & Won (BAC & Tour)
Surreal, subtle and highly stylised, 6.0: How Heap and Pebble Took on the World and Won is an incredibly original piece of theatre. Heap and Pebble, once champion ice dancers, find themselves in a world where there is no longer any ice. Comic skating on wood, the hopeless hopefulness of clowns and obsessive pre-show rituals ensue.
Heap and Pebble, played by Thomas Eccleshare and Valentina Ceschi, are quite unlike any characters you will have met before. Their oddly nuanced English, sheepish smiles and awkward intimacy form an unlikely but endearing portrait of two sports people struggling to hold on to a disappearing lifestyle. This small-scale show is punctuated by moments of audience interaction, when unsuspecting spectators become interviewers and expand the creative possibilities for the performers.
Brimming with absurdities and non sequiturs, Heap and Pebble is charmingly odd. It does however feel much more like a series of disjointed vignettes than a fully worked and integrated show. Aspects such as the impact of climate change and what happened at a fateful competition five years ago are tantalisingly suggested but left more or less unresolved. More back story and some punchier text would really aid this exquisitely performed but underdeveloped show.
– Helena Rampley
