The Limit, Linbury Theatre review ★★★★★

Francesca Hayward and Alexander Campbell, both much-loved Royal Ballet principals, are always a pleasure to watch. Physically they are a good match and both are expressive dance actors. But not even they can save The Limit, a misguided, ultimately pointless dance-theatre adaptation of Sam Steiner’s play Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons.

Steiner’s two-hander was a hit at the 2015 Edinburgh fringe, but its West End run earlier this year had lukewarm reviews. Its dystopian premise is this: a couple have to manage their lives and relationship within a draconian law that limits their daily quota of spoken words to 140.

It’s an intriguing concept, certainly intriguing enough to have led Alexander Campbell to initiate the project which would become The Limit. Over three years, including the lockdown period, Campbell worked with the playwright, choreographer Kristen McNally, director Ed Madden and composer Isobel Waller-Bridge to turn the stage play into a piece of dance-theatre.

In the programme note, McNally and Madden write their aim was ‘to find a dance language which sits alongside Sam Steiner’s text and Isobel Waller-Bridge’s music in ways which feel simultaneously surprising and inevitable; challenging and harmonious; unlikely and specific.’

I don’t think it’s unfair to state that they didn’t quite achieve their aim.

On an empty stage surmounted by an uneven criss-cross arrangement of neon tubes (designers Anisha Fields and Lee Curran) first cast dancers Alexander Campbell and Francesca Hayward (freelancers Hannah Rudd and Jacob Wye make up the second cast), alternate long stretches of speaking with short dancing interludes.

A quartet of musicians – piano, cello, violin and percussion – are just visible off stage to our right, performing Waller-Bridge's unobtrusive incidental score; disembodied newsreader voices are regularly heard announcing the imposition of the new law and its parameters.

The dancers are dressed in tones of grey. The stage is dark grey, too, so there’s little visual stimulation.

Alexander Campbell and Francesca Hayward in The Limit © ROH 2023. Photo: Camilla Greenwell

Although Hayward and Campbell make quite a good fist of it, dancers are not trained to speak or declaim; asking them to speak and dance at the same time means that inevitably some of the words are inaudible. Given that the number of words they’re allowed is limited, that represents a loss.

Both are lovely movers, but the contemporary dancing interludes, though harmonious enough, don’t add anything to the spoken sections, or even illustrate them; in other words, they do not represent that ‘surprising’, ‘challenging’ dance language choreographer and director intended.

Ultimately, as the piece drags on through its long 70 minutes, there’s little to make you care about the pressing questions raised by the play’s premise, or indeed for this couple's tribulations.

Artists should not be damned for experimenting or trying new things, and that’s not the intention of this review. I applaud their daring but, sadly, I don’t think this particular experiment works.