In the dusty, high-octane aftermath of a suspicious blaze, two hyper-focused rodeo clowns battle for supremacy under the big top.

Read this strongly as a queer analogy about wanting to fit in a heteronormative world but not being able to. Astoundingly synchronized movement, especially right at the top

Dale, the rodeo clown, envies the life of (and perhaps crushes on) the straight cowboy who fronts the rodeo - who sneers at him, secure in the knowledge that Dale’s immutably not a cowboy. The rodeo is the cowboy’s world, and Dale is the dregs

Later, Dale is progressively caving to romantic attraction to someone who looks and acts quite a lot like him, but chooses to behave that way with unabashed joy - the shadow variously acts as the temptation of some other person with a pronounced quality of sameness and the reflexive embrace of the self

It was always clear that they were going to burn the rodeo down together in the end. The system didn’t serve them, there was no way to escape it, and desire has a way of clawing its way out

Second half is chock full of fringy metatheatrics and I didn’t have the patience for it tonight. After the charm and subtextual delight of the first half it feels like getting hit with an especially tedious mud brick. Capitalism no good, all systems and problems are the same, news at 11. Nevertheless I will be keeping an eye out for this duo’s future work; they are the toast of off-off- and fringe for a reason, and their best is yet to come