The Shadow, Company Chameleon review ★★★★★

Reading the programme note before embarking on The Shadow is highly recommended, for it’s not until the final scene – the most poignant in the show – that a man and his shadow come face to face, devoid of any other distractions.

Company Chameleon co-artistic director and choreographer Anthony Missen draws on the Jungian concept of ‘the shadow’, the unconscious dark side of our personalities, the side we don’t show anybody. But if we knew tomorrow wasn’t coming, would we then release the shadow and allow our darkest side to do its worst?

Manchester-based Company Chameleon specialises in exploring social and psychological themes; and in The Shadow, which it brought to The Place for a one-off London show, the company’s six performers are joined by six students from the London Contemporary Dance School for a look at extreme human behaviour.

Ben Chatwin’s score, moving from a crescendo of elongated electronic notes to a series of repetitive piano chords with more than a nod to minimalism, adds a suitably ominous aural element to the darkly lit, hazy stage (lighting designer Ben Ormerod).

At first the six performers, all in everyday clothes (costume designer Natalie Johnson) play together in a sequence of forced, slightly hysterical jollity. Lurking at the back, however, are the six shadows, their cover-all black costumes slightly reminiscent of a military black-ops squad.

Gradually the initial jollity gives way to much darker behaviours. One man (Reece Marshall), his face contorted in anguish, frantically rushes around, though it’s unclear exactly what ails him.

That is the problem with the The Shadow: the dramatisation of the core idea (dramaturg Andrew Loretto) is so loose and capricious that attempting to make sense of it all is very hard work.

So, for example, although we’re told that we each have our own shadow, and there are six shadows on stage, one for each performer, not until the end does any individual engage with his or her shadow. The shadows come on and go off again seemingly at random.

In the rare occasions when they do engage with the humans they create powerful scenes: placed in four corners around two men engaged in a violent struggle, they create something like a boxing ring. As they move forward, they narrow the arena until the fighters are hemmed in. The import of this scene is clear.

Company Chameleon’s choreographic language owes more to wrestling than conventional dance, the duets always confrontational encounters between body masses. High-octane energy and a powerful physicality pervade everything the performers do, never letting off for the show’s one-hour duration. Alice Bonazzi is particularly impressive as The Shadow's increasingly central figure, though it would be foolish to hazard a guess at what or who she represents.

The Shadow hovers between engaging and deeply frustrating. Some refining of the narrative structure would improve it immeasurably.