Paper Swans (Pleasance Courtyard)

Paper cuts in the park

In time-loop stories, it usually takes some time before people start acting weird, but with Paper Swans Vyte Garriga and Flabbergast don’t make us wait. A woman (Garriga) is making paper swans in the park well after closing time when she is discovered by a guard (Daniel Chrisostomo) and told to leave, but she insists she hasn’t finished yet. The night repeats itself, the guard discovering her over and over again, both losing grip on reality and more importantly on themselves. After Flabbergast’s bold but divisive production of Macbeth in 2022, this absurdist outing is rooted in (but not solely about) Garriga’s experience as a woman from post-Soviet Lithuania.

Her character’s actions are unusual but don’t expect to find the guard any more relatable. Chrisostomo’s guard is absurdly stiff in his movement and thinking, his movements intentionally robotic and repetitive as though he is being fed instructions line by line. He begins to break out only when he asks questions and offers help. It is unsettling because his role and actions make more sense to us than folding a million paper swans in a park, but it is the need to understand everything and feel nothing that Paper Swans is trying to undermine. Garriga is forceful yet uncertain. Her refusal to leave is not because she has nowhere to go, but because staying and folding (however pointless) has become a part of her identity. The dimensions of them both are explored in glorious detail night after night.

Paper Swans is dark and unusual but really sucks you in. There are multiple times you think the performance is about to end and a new scene begins, each time adding layers of complexity to justify itself. It is open to interpretation from many directions but at its heart are the struggles between art and reason, authority and freedom. Specifically, it calls for the freedom to act unexplainably, something you don’t realise you long for until you see a show like this. Four stars.

Whispers from the Crowd: "I really enjoyed it. I think the Fringe should be about weirdness and taking you out of your comfort zone and making you think. And this will definitely make me think."

Paper Swans will play at Pleasance Courtyard at 11:05 until the 25th of August