The Bridge – Review : Edinburgh Guide

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Breathtaking Aerial Acrobats, The Bridge The aim of the Boilerhouse Company is to present exciting new work blending live performance, music and film staged in unusual venues. In this world premiere of The Bridge, artistic director Paul Pinson and Roxana Pope have devised an outdoor theatrical extravaganza to thrill audiences with amazing high flying circus acrobatics. Staged in the open arena of the University’s Old Quad a giant crane holds a giant trapeze structure in place with two laddered platforms separated by a bridge.

Two carefree little girls Samra and Aida run across the bridge between their homes to see each other. A film backdrop shows them laughing arm in arm, playing together, as the girls jump and fly higher and higher. Their friendship is narrated in retrospect as a poetic memoir, “The bridge was my favourite place, it connected me to you”, one girl recalls. Teenage years follow with nights of music and dancing, but then crisis. War breaks out. No specific time or place – Ulster, Beirut, Bosnia, Iraq? – it’s the situation that counts. In political or religious conflict the girls are separated and their lives torn apart. A soldier guards the bridge, which is now out of bounds.

With a vibrant music soundtrack, live video-camera footage and amazing lighting, the aerial choreography depicts playful childhood freedom followed by danger, pursuit and escape. The freefalling skills of Chantal McCormick and Jennifer Paterson are breathtaking – both dancers and aerial acrobats with experience of circus performance.

Vivien Devlin