Blue Is My Colour
The Zoo, August 5-23

Author: Black&Blue company
Directorial & script advice: Maggie Ford
Musical producers: Kate Jessop & Simon Cookson
Cast includes: Lisa Sudgen, James Stevenson, Leon Gordon
Running time: 50 mins

Black&Blue theatre company is a talented group with an evident specialism for defying stereotypes and limitations. Its musician and narrator Leon Gordon was born blind and partially deaf, yet he can easily put to shame many a performer. Meanwhile the dancers Lisa Sudgen and James Stevenson spend most of their time on the stage in mid-air. Rather cleverly too, their aerial bit of the show is actually meant to be happening under water, whereby their skills cease to be just a feat and become a meaningful aesthetic device. Despite the fact that the actual narrative is clumsily assembled out of two distinct storylines which are never properly rounded off, the material they have got is a very interesting work in progress with moments of real accomplishment. In their two scenes they attempt to con- template both the depths of human despair on earth and the heights of exhilarating beauty on the ocean's bed. It would be a pity not to fully explore this inverted world further when they obviously have the resources.

Duska Radosavljevic

The Stage August 28th 2003