At a moment when we urgently need to reassess our relationship with the natural world, an exploration of human-animal connections feels timely. Kim Donohoe and Pete Lannon’s sweet two-hander blurs the usually sharp division between human and not-human, while posing the question of how much we can ever really know another being – furry, feathered or otherwise.
The show repeatedly returns to two examples of interspecies communication: Irene Pepperberg and the talking parrot Alex in the 1970s, and Margaret Lovatt and the almost-talking dolphin Peter in the 1960s. The latter epitomises the problem of attempting to make other creatures think and speak like us. Alongside these fascinating but troubling true stories, Donohoe and Lannon probe their own flawed means of communicating to one another.
Director Ellie Dubois’s staging is simple but striking. With just a flurry of coloured feathers or a splash of water, the performers transform into their animal counterparts. Their physicality is impressive, subtly suggesting the creatures they are playing with just a twitch of the head here and the shake of an arm – or wing – there. Inhabiting these animals while remaining distinctly human, the performances are reminders of what we share with other species as well as how we are separated from them.
Like Animals nudges at lots of ideas but often stops short of interrogating them. There could be more mileage in questioning our desire to make other species speak our language, or examining the sense of distance humans feel from other animals. What impulse makes us think we are entitled to rule over animals yet also communicate with them like friends? At its heart, though, this show is about the unknowability of relationships and the trickiness in all forms of communication. Donohoe and Lannon are – as they tell us in unison at the start of the show – a real-life couple, a fact that adds poignancy to their quest for understanding. They may love each other, but to some extent they will always be strangers, as impenetrable as Peter the dolphin or Alex the parrot.
• At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
