Devisers: Mycelium Theatre, based on work by James Weiss
Director: Hope Wishart
Tardigrades are curious creatures. These microscopic organisms, largely found in water and mosses, are among the oldest forms of life on Earth, with fossilised versions dating back some 500 million years.
Mycelium Theatre’s devised work centres on a talk about tardigrades by YouTube microbiologist James Weiss. It’s also an ode to the childlike wonder of science and biology. Ben Boulton-Jones, playing James, alternates between the adult talking about microscopic creatures and his younger self, being enthralled by the way trees communicate with their neighbours through their roots, or by the wonders of the stars and the mind-bending concept that their light is aeons old.
Some elements, including the use of contemporary dance, are a little hit-and-miss in terms of telling Weiss’s story. Far more effective is the use of light, particularly that from an overhead projector. Materials placed on the projector’s base transform as their silhouettes appear on the stage’s back wall. A toy soldier with a coin over its head becomes an astronaut, a clothes peg a rocket ship, a piece of moss a glorious oak tree. The cone of light projected from the equipment also allows some play with scale: Boulton-Jones cowers as a young boy, Elijah Bangura’s domineering shadow twice his size, implying a relationship with an abusive father.
It is that manipulation of light and shadow that becomes A Microscopic Odyssey’s strongest selling point. Whether it is the projector’s light or that of hand-held torches, the imaginative use of silhouette and scale comes to dominate. The rest of the work struggles to deliver the same level of originality. While there is merit in presenting microbiological wonder from the perspective of an enthralled child, in several places the work struggles to move from one idea to the next, with some transitions failing to maintain the piece’s overall impetus.
Still, the ensemble works together closely. And while the dancing, dominated by Allie-Rae Fossum, Phoebe Smyth and Bangura, occasionally seems out of place, it is also amusing to envisage tardigrades – whose sex lives are described by James as microscopic orgies – as cavorting in an EDM-fuelled line dance.
A Microscopic Odyssey is a little too scattershot in places to truly encapsulate the wonders of this other world that exists at a scale we can hardly conceptualise. But in its imaginative use of light, shadow, and scale, it demonstrates that seemingly simple effects can create truly original visuals.
Runs until 17 January 2026
