Anna Burnside reviews a production with impressive skills.
Feather Boy and Tentacle Girl are different in every way. He is tall and solid, she’s a wee skelf of a thing. This is great news when you are an acrobatic double act, perfect for lifts and visual jokes.
He likes TikTok, she prefers books. So, obviously, he wants to be a bird and she dreams of becoming a monster.
Their story is told, kind of, by the medium of ariel performance. Together they are playful with a lot of copying and carrying on. Individually they find their different identities with his feathers shedding across the stage while she shreds a large plastic dust sheet.
Performer Vee Smith and Sadiq Ali’s physical skills are hard to dispute - there is a particularly impressive sequence of pole whirling that could almost be flight. Some bits are touching and tender. But the sum of its parts do not add up to very much.
The Unlikely Friendship of Feather Boy and Tentacle Girl is at the Assembly Roxy (Central) at 11:25 until August 17, 2025 (no performance on the 13th).
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