Theatre, like politics, all too often promises much and delivers little. Taylor's Dummies on the other hand reverses this adage by presenting work of such vivid imagination and surprise that the audience were left whooping and stamping their feet with appreciation. Three men play the Taylor, a lonely figure who is approached by a woman with whom he instantly falls in love. Yet he is unable to come to terms with his desire and his imagination conjures a phantasmagoric world of fear and regret and teases him with possibility as he pursues her, and traces of her memory, through a shifting world of rainy streets and noirish cabaret saloons.
Taylor's Dummies is a eulogy to the transformative powers of theatre. A mean looking doll dressed in a tuxedo croons to Tony Bennett, twisting the scale from large to small. A dummy's hand and a pair of shoes tumble and morph into the unattainable woman. The performers climb the walls and sit at tables at a right angle to the ground. The window is opened transporting us from a black box to a night-time café as the Taylor watches his object of obsession pass by. This is a male fantasy, the woman is a dream, an object, a metaphor for – what? Lust, loneliness, partnership and love? A drummer accompanies the performers, fuelling the testosterone to overdrive as the Taylor and the drummer's rhythms roll and clash, pounding out at an ever-increasing volume and pace to reach a final haunting climax.