It is a tribute to Maresa von Stockert's imagination that she squeezes so many issues into her latest work, Glacier. Sometimes the space is crowded, and the points hard to see. But at best the material has been layered like a nesting box of images, each one cunningly springing open the next.
For her framing narrative, Von Stockert presents a morality tale about an eco-conscious artist. Her protagonist, a sculptor, has devised an interactive exhibition on the theme of global warming. Its contents, in the form of polystyrene icebergs, provide the stage setting. In the sculptor's opening monologue, Von Stockert acknowledges the complexity of her project. Is it childish to make art out of environmental crisis? How recyclable is polystyrene? But if this introductory speech strikes a worryingly earnest tone, the work takes flight when the issues are given choreographic licence.
Von Stockert's dancers double as visitors to the exhibition, and as they play with the sculptures she celebrates their inventiveness. But the work turns threatening when it suggests the apocalyptic price of such pleasures. The disintegrating sculptures become a melting world, and, as the dancers move precariously on polystyrene fragments, they seem to be clinging to shrinking ice floes. Surrounded by a soundscape of crashing seas, the dancers look terrified.
It is when the artist discovers his exhibition has been sponsored by an oil company that the work becomes most harrowing. As crude oil drips on the installation, the dancers become filthy. Twitching and miserable, they morph into a flock of sea birds, doomed like the human race by the taint of oil.
· At Merlin Theatre, Frome, on Saturday. Box office: 01373 465949. Then touring.
