Matter Era – Cultivated

Entering the Assembly House for Matter Era feels something like a (very genteel) boxing match: there’s a haze in the air, and a scaffold square dominates the room, seats arranged on all four sides.

But what’s to come is the antithesis: rather than big characters and outrageous moves, this is an hour-long study in little, with the canvas like stage populated by fragmentary pieces.

Small balls bubble up from hidden crevices, bone-like shards appear too. They move mysteriously around, scratchingly, tentatively. They – and their movements do anthropomorphise these odd bits of stick and fragments of fluff – walk and interact.

There is something evolutionary in the progression, as the pieces get bigger, succeed and fail, join up and fall apart. Fur appears. A velvety green bag, its shape rising and falling like a slowly breathing animal – but without any discerning features.

Somewhere underneath we assume the two puppeteers Noah Casey and Bella Young are doing magic things with magnets to control their freakish (mostly stringless) marionettes, designed by artists Sam Routledge and Tim Spooner.

Somewhere behind us Madeleine Flynn is live mixing a soundtrack that marries organic soundscapes with Clanger-like squeaks.

It’s weirdly captivating, at least at first, but the charm is difficult to sustain over the full hour. The puppets have character, and we give them emotion, but they lack a narrative.