Theatre Review: Dances for a Lost Traveller, Warehouse Theatre, Croydon

This is a new show from Signdance Collective, who appeared at the Warehouse two years ago with their piece But Beautiful about drug addict musician Art Pepper.

Signdance are an arts company who use their various disabilities as aids to performance and the whole project has a very experimental and impromptu air about it.

It would be patronising of me to judge their performance by any standards other than those I would apply to conventional shows. And although it is probably not politically correct of me to say so, I found the whole enterprise disappointing and certainly not my choice of entertainment.

The show consisted of four sections, and the opening was arguably worst of them all.

In The Words, Alex Ward played a cacophony of loud and discordant electric guitar music to which Isolte Avila (who has suffered from arthritis since birth) and profoundly deaf David Bower danced – though it was not like any contemporary dance I have ever seen before.

A solo by Claire-Louise West looked as if she was doing battle with a particularly annoying mosquito, symbolised by West's buzzing clarinet.

Listen featured Bower attempting to convey via song and dance the white noise he hears with his continuing tinnitus.

I most enjoyed Ward's quartet of songs and thought Draw a Line particularly good.

There were considerable technical difficulties at one stage of the performance and I hate to say it, but this show is probably not really ideal for general consumption by a paying public.

Diana Eccleston

· Until July 12.

2 stars