Omega

This Pandora's box of bizarre and sinister images takes place at the rather un-cabaret-friendly hour of 2.35pm, and may leave you wondering what exactly it was you consumed for lunch.

Moscow-based blackSKYwhite have teamed up with composer Michael Begg to create a circus of horrors series of vignettes that vamp up their disturbing qualities to hysterical proportions: a giant white puff of a clown; a two-headed tap dancer with a microphone in each hand; a wriggling, pulsing pupa lovingly carried in the arms of a man dressed in soviet military uniform. The score, which combines both Begg's swelling synth passages and savagely ramped-up versions of merry-go-round, swing and oompah-jazz, is music to drink absinthe to, alone at 2am in a haunted house.

But while the cast demonstrate mesmerising nuance and skill in grotesque clowning, the choreography never really goes anywhere. A feather-hatted woman wriggles for a while before tossing juggling skittles to the ground. A mannequin bride twitches with hypnotic creepiness, but doesn't develop beyond the immediate shock of the first impression. It leaves each segment feeling more like a tableau vivant that outstays its welcome than an individual skit. Flashes of arresting innovation—a woman wearing a backward mask taking a bow, or a man with bone-thin limbs and tail—are lost in a soup of disconnected weirdness.

This show could be fascinating staged onboard a ghost train or tucked behind velvet curtains in an interactive club environment, but as it stands, the sum doesn't do justice to its parts.