A man sits on a toilet seat under a spotlight, his naked body smeared with chalk and black splodges. He gets up to strut, writhe or jiggle his bits. It might sound like the stuff of an underground fetish club – Adam Scott-Rowley its creature – but it is a physical meditation on mortality and the dying body.
There is no through-narrative, and the show is built on surreal non-sequitur flashes, some arcane and inaccessible, others searing, tragic, comically grotesque. The show’s creator, Scott-Rowley is an astonishingly protean performer who is magnetic to watch. He preens under a spotlight like a young Adonis but then bends to become an elderly woman dancing stiffly or an old man weeping in pain. He might be a figure from a biblical hell in some scenes – a Dantean fiend or one of Hieronymus Bosch’s wretches, silently screaming.
Co-created with Joseph Prowen and Tom Morley, the narrative is wide and loose, sometimes too much so, and seems to span the ages. There is a man stuck in a well, a woman dancing to Frank Sinatra, an ancient Celt performing a sacrifice. They stand on a precipice between life and death, in their own discrete worlds, and the play does not build to anything greater than these parts.
As a result, it seems made up of strands of thought rather than a deeper meditation, its meanings just out of grasp – like death, I suppose. It is a uniquely arresting show in spite of the bittiness – a cross between physical theatre and performance art, and surprisingly witty despite its darkness. There is an audience sing-along to A Dildo Hanging Out of My Arse, written by Phil McDonnell, which is a genuinely warming moment. The sound design by Sam Baxter brings its own drama, from demonic chants to electronic beats and explosions, along with Matt Cater’s dream-like lighting.
Nothing is off-limits and it is so earthy and exposed that the toilet itself threatens to become Chekhov’s gun: is Scott-Rowley going to top it all off by using it, for real?
Having transferred from the Edinburgh fringe, the nakedness seems more than a festival gimmick. At its most potent, it is a post-pandemic show staring into the face of our recent past, its silences charged, its nakedness vulnerable, timeless and epic.
• At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 4 May
