Reviews

6.0: How Heap & Pebble Took on the World & Won (BAC & Tour)

| Off-West End |

10 September 2010

The lights are dimmed and a hush descends upon the crowd. The music swells and two figures glide (well sort of) onto the wooden stage and take up their positions with the expectations of the world resting on their sequinned shoulders. Can ice skating survive in a world with no ice?

If anyone can do it Heap Krusiak and Pebble Adverati (a Slovakian Torvill and Dean) can. Who else was able to marry politics with ice dance so beautifully in Escape – the Tibetan show where Heap portrayed a Buddhist monk and Pebble was an unforgettable Dali Lama? Or present a stunning re-enactment of the moon landing in Apollo? (Pebble was Neil Armstrong and Heap an unforgettable lunar docking module.)

6.0: How Heap and Pebble Took On The World and Won is poignant vignette about two ice dancers who won’t give up against seemingly insurmountable odds. With a stage haunted by crackly strands of ‘I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas’ the psychological ghosts that haunt these past champions are revealed, with the 6.0 in the title both a nod to their past achievements and a wink to the effects of global warming that have left them on this splintered stage.

But this is not theatre as environmental flag waving. The issue is deftly handled with the tragedy of this warm world present in every moment of Heap’s fractured desperate patter and Pebble’s silent broken stare.

Written and performed with infinite care by Valentina Ceschi and Thomas Eccleshare, 6.0: How Heap and Pebble Took On The World and Won is a tightly choreographed show that will leave you feeling both bitter sweet and brilliantly optimistic.

– Honour Bayes