Isn’t it familiar: there is a small, safe world somewhere, whose inhabitants are not only all the same, but also bored to the degree that allows them only to sleep and sleepwalk, bouncing back and forth in erratic actions of not very engaged signs of interest and quite polite refusals rather than acceptance.

They are unaware of the storm rocking outside.

However difficult it is to draw a storyline of the new Clod Ensemble’s show, the opening scene of On the High Road encloses a hint – a nearly inaudibly sung word “politicians” leads to a well working presumption, that pointlessness of the action on the scene depicts the meaninglessness of last couple of decades of politics on the northern hemisphere.

With this key, the show opens like a book. It is quite obvious that the storm addresses the changes of the Earth’s climate; the small, inhabitable white spaces on the stage set are the shrinking parts of the planet, where weather extremities are still not being felt, as in the UK, or Europe or the US.

Three “others”, who ruin the sleepy balance of the world are not invited guests nor invaders, but inhabitants of a different world, which was destroyed by the storm.

What might sound like a boring lecture, in Clod Ensemble’s show is told without any use of words – problems of climate change, migration and social adaptation are told with dance and music only.

Choreography is the strongest part of the show, an absolutely superb, six-out-of-five star work. This team of dancers gathered here was capable of doing everything that the director might had fancied, but Suzy Willson has somehow resisted the temptation of showing off and used all this incredible talent only to tell the story she had to tell.

When great light work, simplicity of costumes and setting is added, a truly stunning scenes emerge, with actors transforming into a single, liquid-like form, floating up and down the uneasy stage setting.

It is an experimental theatrical piece, so simple pleasure is not to be expected. As visual aspect of the show might be only difficult for those who react badly to stroboscopes, the acoustics are seriously difficult. It is simply not a show for the faint of ears, because perfectly defendable from the artistic point of view, brutal music composed by Paul Clark builds on irritation and uneasiness.

And the attempts to make the acoustic experience less annoying quite possibly led to the most questionable decision of the show’s creators – inviting singers of different backgrounds.

It didn’t go as planned, because musicians got stuck halfway between the composer and the director, their songs floating, either too ethereal to be understandable, or perfectly performed, but too obviously borrowed from a different show (a Cabaret-inspired song by George Heyworth) or so mystically unworldly, that the meaning has evaporated.

Yet, it is an experimental theatrical piece, and points cannot be deducted for boldness and artistic courage. 5/5