Unlike most reviews that ease you in with polite preliminaries, I'm going to get straight down to calling a spade a spade. Miquel Barceló and Josef Nadj call themselves "highly acclaimed artists" but if Paso Doble is anything to go by, they just aren't.
The duo, Nadj a French performer-choreographer, and Barceló ("one of Spain's foremost contemporary artists"), hack, cut and bash away at a white wall of clay and a red floor of it, for 50 minutes.
They slap, poke and punch it with their fists, feet, faces and what look like giant ceramic tools.
Nadj throws large unfired clay pots on Barceló's head, and squeezes ears and eyes from the damp material. So numerous and heavy are these, you think Barceló will either suffocate or break his neck.
Nadj then jet-sprays the entire scene with a white clay slip (I think it's called) and the pair finally dive through the holes they have made in the clay wall.
It's a clever starting point to explore ideas about living sculpture, immersive art, and even ones about Adam being made of clay. The dust-to-dust theme of how man is hewn from the soil, and how he will return to it, is a compelling anxiety and for long a fertile seam for theatrical works.
However, Barceló and Nadj manage to produce only a pottery demonstrations.
You can't help thinking them guilty of extreme laziness, or simply artistic limitation. It's as if they had the one good idea about a giant wall of clay, a monumental set if ever there was one, but weren't able to develop it.
Believe me when I tell you two blokes cutting at clay is not interesting to look at. Compare it to the ingenious integration of set and motion by someone like Pina Bausch. The dance-theatre queen bee has used giant mounds of earth and thousands of carnations, to give two examples, in her creations, and they are not only impressive sets but also completely integrated with the work's themes.
These two? If claymation is your thing, Wallace and Gromit are a better bet.
Until 19 Jan. LIMF until 27 Jan (www.mimefest.co.uk).
London International Mime Festival: Miquel Barcelo And Josef Nadj: Paso Doble
Barbican Theatre
Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
