Tourniquet 2013

I have a lengthy list of questions for the cast of Tourniquet 2013. They include: How did you avoid urinating on yourselves an hour into the performance? Who is your taxidermist? Have you ever tripped over the cling film? And is that corn starch?

My imaginary quickfire interrogation may provide the only real insight into the hour and fifteen minutes audiences experience with Belgian theatre company Abattoir Fermé. To try to convey a synopsis—something to do with an encounter, an exorcism, a vision of the afterlife—would be missing the point. Tourniquet is one-hundred per cent pure, uncut silent Belgian experimental theatre. With a lot of nudity. If that sounds like something you'd be up for, then it might just be the most mind-blowing bit of performance art you'll see at this year's Fringe. If it sounds like something you wouldn't want to get near with a ten-foot pole then... it's probably best that you follow that instinct.

For those David Lynch fans among us, with deep-running love for all things avant garde, Tourniquet provides a lush, immersive sensory experience; intermingling beauty and horror on the backdrop of an engaging soundscape – one which Abattoir Fermé describe as the show's "invisible fourth character". In particular, model-turned-actor Kirsten Pieters's balance between alluring and grotesque is particularly impressive, and her eerily effortless acrobatic skills keep the show well away from edgy student theatre territory and into the supernatural.