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	Zoo Roxy (venue website) Dance and Physical Theatre 5-15, 17-22, 24-27 Aug, 4:20pm-5:20pm
Recommended for age 12+ only.

Recommending a brand-new play is always a leap of faith; but in this case, we’re confident we’ll land on solid ground.  From the same stable as last year’s hit The Vanishing Horizon, The Seagull Effect promises a stylized, physical interpretation of an event which has entered our national folk memory – 1987’s Great Storm.

Immortalized forever (and deeply unfairly) as the hurricane Michael Fish failed to predict, those six terrifying autumn hours should make a striking backdrop for an intriguing play.  Using the sudden chaos of the storm as a metaphor for a crumbling relationship, Idle Motion Theatre Company hope to build a filmic atmosphere on-stage, with multimedia and staged elements revealing the personal narratives underpinning the lives tossed by the storm.

It’s an ambitious project.  But last year’s Vanishing Horizon made similar promises, and, in the main, delivered on them – earning near-universal praise for its ingenious staging, and constant sense of surprise.  With an inspired concept and a talented company, we’ve high hopes for another success this year.  And in case you’re wondering, the “seagull” of the title has nothing to do with Chekhov; in the days before satellite, weathermen knew there was a storm out at sea when the seagulls come to land.

The Vanishing Horizon is also returning to the Fringe for a one-week run: 22 – 27 Aug, 12:35pm (1:30pm), at the main Zoo venue.