The Mill, Ockham’s new piece, is performed on a set like a huge cat’s cradle, consisting of giant wooden spools connected and operated by thick ropes on which the cast climb, swing pull and strain. Suspended in the middle is a giant treadmill. Two men join the original Ockham trio — Alex Harvey, Charlotte Mooney and Tina Koch — in an acrobatic display of humans trapped in a machine. A tough female voice on the loudspeaker starts things off. “Rest period completed — resume labour,” she orders.

Labour in this performance seems to have no aim other than to keep the infernal machine going. Grunting acrobats haul on a rope here which turns a reel there; there is no movement possible without some counter-movement somewhere else as the ropes are threaded through everything. The performers climb high, causing others to slip or fall. They become trapped in the treadmill, running like a pet mouse, struggling to keep it turning, or clinging precariously to its outside. There is a feeling of terrific effort to keep these elements moving. Sometimes the performers are manipulating the machine, but for much of the time the mill is manipulating them.

Does it all work? It’s entertaining enough to keep an audience happy for the 55 minutes of the show, but, looked at more closely, it’s apparent that there’s no great acrobatic ability on display here, and that the ideas for what can be done with the components of this mill run out before the end. Finally, the system breaks down and the loudspeaker is unplugged, but there is no feeling of freedom gained.

These people trapped for life in an unforgiving machine, driven on by a stern unseen voice, bring to mind the workers in Fritz Lang’s 1927 cinematic masterpiece, Metropolis, but here the atmosphere, successfully created at the start, is destroyed by rather feeble attempts at humour.