Molhados&Secos – Wet and Dry

Sometimes baffling, sometimes visually absurd and comic, Molhados&Secos – Wet and Dry is a cracked laugh of a piece. Mixing physical theatre and dance, Brazilian company ParaladosanjoS fling themselves at us unapologetically from the stage in a maddeningly messy blaze of creative energy.

Performed by co-founders Marcos Becker and Marília Ennes, the show is loosely inspired by natural disasters. Across four scenes, directed by Fernando Villar, Idit Herman, Monica Alla and Raquel Scotti Hirson, they translate people’s tragedies into dark comedy.

So, we get a writhing Ennes in a coin-covered dress, reciting words like ‘Jacuzzi’ and ‘H2O’, while Becker rolls around in a massive transparent beach ball. Elsewhere, the pair repeatedly mime a couple’s attempt to rescue their belongings from flooding, as well as swinging from a rope, kissing and clutching furniture.

This show is almost balletically ungainly in places, filtering the haplessness of silent cinema through a distorted modern lens. And the piece’s best acts are those that spin the devastation of such events into a winking commentary on how we report them. There’s a corkscrew comedy to the visual insanity that works.

But it’s not always as funny as it thinks, unbalancing itself as it strives for effect. In these moments, the show’s excessiveness, as well as feeling artistically tenuous, begins to drag. Its lurking critique of social inequality is submerged and we become an audience to empty spectacle, as the show pats itself on its back.