The station is empty. The last train has departed. But there are ghosts lurking in the shadows. Coats hanging in a rack sprout hands and bowler hats grow heads; a fat headless midget waddles across the stage holding a blue balloon that solemnly stands to attention.
To the wail of music interspersed with catches of children's song and calls, other ghostly figures emerge. These are the vagrants, the outcasts, and the eternal refugees who, with suitcases in hand, pick their way across the train tracks on the moth-eaten map of Europe. At one point a train looms out of the video screen on the back wall and, in a screech of whistle and smoke, appears to thunder over the stage and into the audience. As the carriages rumble over the outcasts' prone bodies, the light wraps their limbs in a deadly caress.
Yet somehow you can't quite squeeze the life out of these spectres who dance their way to disaster and clown their way to catastrophe. They giggle and play Russian roulette as if they can cheat death; they stamp and dance with giddy defiance, shirts flapping like the wings of dying swans.
Played by a company of five whey-faced, shaven-headed clowns who are also skilled dancers, this hour-long piece from the Potsdam-based Russian-German theatre company Do-Theatre/Fabrik is both a requiem and a celebration. Stylistically, this company has much in common with that other Russian-German company, Derevo.
Drawing on both Butoh and European folk traditions it takes us on a surreal and playful journey in the heart of darkness. It awakens the past, breathes life into all those old black and white photos and forces us to remember not the ghosts, but the flesh and blood. It turns millions into individuals.
Towards the end, the back of the stage erupts in fireworks. The figures walk towards the light and their bodies are illuminated by exploding patterns of colour and light. Like the entire show there is something both joyous and terrible about this image. These people are transfigured. But it's hard not to avert your eyes from the burning.
Until February 19. Box office: 01273 647100.
