The Tartuffe/The Trial

It's tough going beyond the Fringe, no matter how talented you are. So it's a tribute to the talent of young company Belt Up that their Edinburgh transfer (of riffs on Molière's comedy 'Tartuffe' and Kafka's 'The Trial') is expansive enough to fill the cavernous underground vaults of Southwark Playhouse. In 'Tartuffe' the troupe occupies Molière's drama like irreverent comic squatters, redecorating it beyond recognition with preposterous Franglais accents, pop-cultural pastiches and a skit-powered energy that helps you forgive the occasional shameless rag week cliché. The fourth wall is cheerily knocked to bits in the process, as is the plot: every situation soon becomes an excuse for multiplying gags, mimes and parodies. Sometimes they hit gold: the hysterical re-telling of the 'Lord of the Rings' story as bible story by a fake guru, with Gandhi in the roles of Gandalf and Nick Griffin as the Balrog (a pastiche within a riff within a play within an adaptation within a play) could only come out of this kind of manic patchworking. Belt Up are crude, lively, and some of the detail in their performances signals huge potential. But you can't run a show on pure energy: their schtick will be even better when they discover how to be still and to spin out a moment, a character, or an idea into sustained flight.

Belt Up, who have a rough and ready intimacy with their audience, could also learn a thing or two from site specific gurus Punchdrunk about how to touch them. Acting a role (as some do in 'Tartuffe') or being blindfolded and herded (as we all are in the dark parable 'The Trial') are leaps of faith: the audience deserves to be led and included rather than mocked and pushed around. The thrill of touching your audience is hard to reconcile with Kafka's stories, where alienation and precision go hand in mandible. Belt Up injects a sense of horror, sexual corruption and bewilderment into this spooky staging of 'The Trial', in which mysterious scenes and characters briefly light up the dark holes and corners of this railway arch space. But the journey of Josef K, prosecuted by a mysterious machinery of court and forced to confront the absence of a higher judge, can't be shared by the audience when we are bunched up into a bemused and wary herd, instead of individually exploring what it means to be alone. As a calling card this double bill is impressive, and as schizophrenic as the masks of comedy and tragedy themselves. It's not yet the finished article, but it's a great trailer for whatever Belt Up do next.