Sawdust Symphony review – a surreal circus where stagecraft meets woodcraft

Power drill? Check. Hammers? Present and correct. Chainsaw? Fully charged. But it’s best not to give a full inventory for this unclassifiable hour of circus-theatre-carpentry in the fringe’s Made in Germany showcase because Michael Zandl, David Eisele and Kolja Huneck have some major surprises in their toolbox and some seriously professional kit. This really is a workshop production.

With an operatic accompaniment, it starts with a race to see which of the trio is fastest to assemble a chair from offcuts of wood, each using different methods. As they show off their handiwork, Huneck does not risk sitting on his stool, fixed together with thick dollops of smeared glue. Instead, in the first of several surprise exits and entrances, he disappears between the floorboards of the raised makeshift stage. When he eventually emerges from a trapdoor his body is slathered in paste. (There is an often gunky sound design by Juliano Abramovay and Lasse Munk.) You just hope there are shower facilities backstage.

Soon, giant nails are shooting upwards among the performers like green shoots, a forest is formed out of upturned hammers and sawdust is falling around them like snow. The show is full of wooden wonders, not least a freshly whittled spinning top that spirals around the stage and is then turned upside down, its point used to support an even bigger toy.

Amid acrobatics and juggling, each of these craftsmen establishes his own personality: exasperated Zandl, pursuing a game of whack-a-mole with those nails; goggle-wearing poet Eisele, lost in rapture among his materials; and gloop-loving clown Huneck, the only character to talk (in voiceover), surreally suggesting how glue may react when squished between two planks (“warm and comfortable … feels like home”).

It’s like Looney Tunes meets Pina Bausch, the trio’s individual and collective obsessions played out with humour and despair amid the sensory pleasure of newly planed wood shavings. Caught in lighting designer Sanne Rosbag’s warm glow, the trio deliver a lightly unsettling, surprisingly suspenseful and handsomely crafted hour.

• At Zoo Southside, Edinburgh , until 25 August
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