Nearly Human – Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Pleasance Dome: QueenDome

Nearly Human continues at Pleasance Dome: QueenDome, Edinburgh from 2-12 and 14-26 August 2019.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

First show of the season, and in celebration, the QueenDome has regressed into a primordial soup – no carbon-based life forms as yet, but plenty of prog brass (as any decent human might expect).

We sit amongst the turmoil at the beginning of the known universe and out of the darkness appears, an atom, spinning seamlessly in the hands of Christo Squier (who also plays three instruments, sings, designs the sound and ADs the company – what have you done with your unfathomable existence?).

The next hour is a warp-drive-prog-rock-brass-necked-time-machine-tour on the tail of said atom, playfully bashing through its myriad states and journeys from basic respiration through to self-contemplation and beyond – in accordance with scientific philosopher Carl Sagan.

Sagan has a lot to answer for. His meditations on the fabric of our existence have echoed through countless artistic works. There’s something about the way he wraps scientific rigour up in poetic lecture which is catnip to the existentially-minded.

Likewise, Nearly Human artfully balances the rigour and discipline of its score with an uninhibited spontaneity of sound and movement. You feel at once as though you’re watching something meticulously created and beautifully chaotic.

There are four under-eights in the front row, and these are huge concepts to grasp even for the significantly-over-eights,  but won over by the tumultuous energy of the show, they whizz joyfully between curious transfixion and kinetic mania – in no small part helped by Pablo Fernandez Baz’s light-displays.

Indeed, for an audience of any age, this show would still be turning up new discoveries many viewings down the line.

There are some teething troubles. The narrative could do with just a little more space to explore, and we lose the words when the band is fully charged, which is a shame as the lyrics printed on our programme are full of thought.

Perhaps Contraption has the rare joy of being unbelievably talented, but also collaboratively telepathic. Having been an experienced gig-band for years prior, their awareness of each other, and attention to detail, is clear. Choreography is expansive and imaginative – and chemistry onstage is perfectly tempered.

First show of the season, and it’s no good to start raving before you’ve seen the rest of the programme, but this is exactly the kind of virtuosic madness we come to the festival for. Go and wash your brain in it.

Aura Simon