Deluge, presented by Gabi Flares and Andrea Maciel at Underbelly Cowgate, is a one-woman exploration of abandonment and the grief left in its wake. It had a successful run last year. The show is ambitious, dense and hyper-active, blending video, sound, movement, dance, clowning, absurdism and audience participation. Yet, with so many competing elements, the core point of the piece gets lost in the noise and I found myself checking the time in the hope that it would finish soon.
Gabi Flares is undoubtedly a talented performer, she engages the audience with simple smiles and nods, holding us in the palm of her hand. A trained dancer, she moves fluidly and with skill. Initially trapped inside a pair of stepladders which she uses to build a beautifully choreographed movement sequence, weaving through, balancing and falling around the steps, however the ladder is never referenced again, leaving it unclear why she was able to step away from it. This is the nub of the issue with Deluge, the underlying narrative strand is too weak to push through all the competing strands and different elements of the story.
Flares incorporates real stories collected from 40 crowdsourced interviews but the brief snippets from a Rachel or a Rebecca telling us their story of loss just don’t draw your interest in enough. The symbolism of the jam feels overdone, the video sequences drag and are overplayed although some of the audience found them funny, and there’s a long, slightly tuneless song. At one point I felt I had the perfect ‘that’s so Fringe moment’ as jam is smeared all over the floor at length alongside a very convoluted speech about endings and middle of endings which again is never fully explored.
Billed as a ‘dramedy’, Deluge lands firmly on the ‘experimental’ end of Fringe. Overflowing with themes: water, flooding, holes, grief, endings, sounds, etc, it ultimately feels cluttered rather than cohesive and, to be honest, at times ‘self indulgent’. There’s so much creativity here but it needs serious work from an experienced dramaturg to weld all the elements into a more cohesive and engaging whole.
Listings and ticket information can be found hereÂ
