REVIEW: Collaborator by Ockham’s Razor, at The Place, MimeLondon 2026
‘the performance brilliantly mirrors how lives and relationships operate’ ★★★★ ½
Collaborator is a distilled, quietly powerful work from Ockham’s Razor, returning to the essentials that have defined the company for two decades: trust, risk, and the fragile mechanics of human collaboration.
Performed by Artistic Directors Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney, this intimate duet unfolds around a suspended frame on an unadorned stage. What emerges is not spectacle for its own sake, but a finely tuned exploration of how two people make something together—how they negotiate weight, intention, failure, and care.
Stripped back to its essentials, the work avoids spectacular jumps or whirling feats. Instead, we see his feet on her face, their bodies stacked and folded on top of one another. The action feels joyful yet deeply poetic, evoking their long-term collaboration and relationship through the image of two people trying to fit into a square. To be together, the piece suggests, we must bend, fold, and push our physical and emotional boundaries to their extremes.
The work then moves into waves: moments that reveal how the pair function both constructively and anti-constructively. Through very simple actions—running together, towards each other, or alone—the performance brilliantly mirrors how lives and relationships operate. With a joyful and lightly irreverent tone, the piece speaks to something universally recognisable: the ongoing labour of being together. Twenty years is a long time. Dark periods pass; light passes too.
What becomes most striking are the moments of watching. Several times, the performers stop doing and simply observe what is happening on stage—calmly, communally. This shared gaze generates the work’s deepest emotional force. That togetherness is what truly moves people.
The show ends where it began, with the square aerial frame. This time, however, the bodies do not fold over one another. They extend—together, as one. The action is simple, restrained, and quietly decisive.
I would call this show as a circus of relation. This poetic performance resists the myth of the superhuman performer. Instead, it insists that the true spectacle lies in how humans exist with one another. This is precisely what Collaborator achieves—with clarity, generosity, and deep humanity.
The Place schedule of shows https://theplace.org.uk/whats-on/
MimeLondon schedule of shows https://mimelondon.com/calendar-2026/
Ockham's Razor, part of MimeLondon 2026 at The Place
Cast and creatives
Created, Directed and Performed by Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney (Ockham’s Razor)
Producer: Alison King (Turtle Key Arts)
Choreography: Nathan Johnston
Design and Equipment Concept: Ockham’s Razor
Costume Design: Tina Bicât
