Only Bones – Daniel Nodder
In the beginning there was a glow, accompanied by a single tone, piercing the dark, increasing in volume and pulsing until the energy exploded into a frenzy of dynamic motion and sound, the complexity of the strange shapes forming sequences which become patterns set against beats and electronic melody as the universe came into existence.
A largely non-verbal journey from the Big Bang to the death of the stars, the challenge that New Zealand performer Daniel Nodder has set himself in one-man show Only Bones is not small, but he is undeniably hugely talented though not always in a way which is easily accessible, a flexible half-man/half-Muppet who through contortion and muscle control metamorphoses on a bare stage with only a single dynamic light for company.
Likely the most minimalist show on the Fringe, is Only Bones interpretive dance or is it physical theatre? Much of it, unfortunately, is mime, and if the audience loses the thread early they are unlikely to recover it until he moves to his next sequence, particularly those beyond the front rows who, in no fault of Nodder, often lose context below waist level, for this is a full-body performance with frustratingly restricted view of the flat stage.
Creating concepts from clothing and projected light, limbs developing and his hands becoming snapping jaws, the extinction of the dinosaurs is clear, and whizzing forward through evolution to discovering magnetic fields and the exploration of space the scope is ever expanding, but with some of the simpler segments running slow and long, like multicellular life next to amoeboids, the more complex it is the more interesting the show is.
Only Bones – Daniel Nodder continues Downstairs at Assembly Roxy until Sunday 30th August
