Time for Fun

It’s the hands rather than the feet that do the dancing in this original show from St Petersburg-based Hand Made Theatre. With nothing but rolled up sleeves, white gloves and a well-timed UV light to aid them, the ensemble create patterns, puppets and giant shapes to a soundtrack that shifts from Grieg’s Piano Concerto to Swan Lake to Flower of Scotland.

The show’s most successful sketches come either when they use their hands as puppets – a parody of the cygnet dance from Swan Lake is wonderfully done, starting with dinky dextrous fingers then reprised as a full-arm version – or when the UV light is on them, picking out their white disembodied gloves, making their arms float like an artist’s brush strokes from one image to the next. A Picasso-esque face melts into an opening flower, Nessie becomes a Highland dancer.

In these sections the effect of animation in action is so strong it’s easy to forget there are humans attached to the floating arms, let alone a whole team of them working in harmony.

Assembly Roxy, 623 3030, until 27 Aug (not 13 & 20), 2.30pm, £11 (£10).