Tess

Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney, after Thomas Hardy

Ockham’s Razor and Turtle Key Arts

HOME, Manchester

June 5-7, 2025: 2 hrs 25 mins

Horse story - a scene from Tess by Ockham's Razor. All pics: Kie Cummings

This is the show co-commissioned by the Lowry, first seen there in February last year. I missed it then, so as it tours the UK I’m glad HOME has given us another chance to see what Ockham’s Razor has been up to.

Based on Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, it tells the story through continuous narration, mime and movement, with two versions of Tess in view almost the whole time. One of them is the narrator (Hanora Kamen), merging with the remainder of the cast at times and helping out to a degree, since the other six performers (Lauren Jamieson, Victoria Skillen, Leah Wallings, Joshua Frazer, Nat Whittingham and the other Tess, Lila Naruse) have their work cut out, not just in movement to show the story, but also assembling and re-shaping the set and its decoration.

With a combination of performance art, circus skills and some dancing, Tina Bicat’s design evoking vivid stage pictures, lighting design by Aideen Malone, a video backdrop (Daniel Denton) and a continuous recorded music score by Holly Khan, the show invites comparison with narrative dance theatre as championed by Northern Ballet and Matthew Bourne in recent decades – but of course they don’t usually rely on narration to make sure the audience knows what’s happening.

Bicat’s theatre imagery is by far the most impressive aspect of the production, evoking the 19th Century rural setting of the story (the dawn scene at the beginning looks a bit like it was made for Copland and Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring ballet), and offering several tableaux for the ensuing stages of the yarn. There is a definite visual theme: a large number of wooden planks are constantly assembled and disassembled to provide platforms, create fences, tables, walls and a bed - and in one spectacular sequence, to construct the skeleton of an entire house. There’s even a reminiscence of War Horse, as two performers, a plank and an animal head become a horse for Tess to ride.

The music is simple but often evocative, occasionally overly repetitive (or minimalist, as we now call it). The extensive choreography, by Nathan Johnston is also effective, with an extended pas de deux for Angel Clare (the second man with whom she is deeply involved) and Tess, counterpointed by three other performers, before the interval break, and a powerful solo for him after it. It’s in the concept that periodically everything stops for a circus-type trick, as those not directly involved take up support positions for the high balancing or tumbling, and though that jars if you’re seeing the show only as dance drama, it’s skilfully executed and helps create the growing tension that builds the second part of the show to its grim climax.

So this is certainly an audience-friendly spectacle, and the tragic story of “a pure woman”, as Hardy called her. A victim of male dominance, society’s hypocrisy and the ever-threatening poverty of 19th Century rural England is a scene that appeals to us today. Ockham’s Razor’s cut-to-the-chase approach may not plumb the depths of emotion and characterisation, but as an achievement by a small company doing a lot with the talents they have, it’s impressive.

More info and tickets here