Soap

Overview

If you're a fan of Smoke and Mirrors and La Clique (and its act of bathtub acrobatics, in particular), then you'll love Soap. Co-directed by Markus Pabst, of La Clique's bathtub, and Maximilian Rambaek, it lets loose a company of acrobats, dancers, jugglers and contortionists from Berlin's Circle of Eleven to transform the generally private and uninspiring bathroom domain into one of wonder, daring, cheekiness and sublimity.

On a stage glimmering with droplets and shrouded in steam sit a series of bathtubs at staggered heights. The performers use these solid, utilitarian frames as props every which way as well as calling on a parade of aerial silks, straps, trapeze, hoops, bouncy balls and a requisite rubber ducky. It's all done to the backing of the best mixtape anyone will ever make you, in which languorous French chanteuses abut angsty prog metal and Gnarls Barkley gives way to Sia and the Doors. As the acts roll with the music, the show entirely avoids the expected pitfall of repetition, and when the tubs finally fill with water, it only gets more thrilling.

The spectacle in this kind of show is agile, purpose-built bodies absorbed in feats of aesthetic athletics. Soap takes the edge off the sexiness with plenty of humour, and an opera singer surveying the scene from atop the highest tub brings glamour and gravitas. All of the performers show incredible skill, and most have charisma in bucketloads. Performances as varied as a sweet foot-puppet romance and a pensive trapeze dance that sweeps over lightly flooded floors each evoke their own poignancy. It's the best 70 minutes you'll spend on your toilette.