Contact in the City: Ockham’s Razor’s mesmerising Upper Campfield takeover

The second part of the Contact In The City season – taking theatre on the road to sites from Ancoats to Stretford while the Contact theatre’s home building on Oxford Road is transformed – gets underway in August with a mesmerising double bill from critically acclaimed aerial theatre company Ockham’s Razor. Transforming the cavernous Upper Campfield Market Hall into a buzzing festival hub, complete with street food and ice cream stalls, circus sensation Ockham’s Razor will present two shows in one for a spectacular family treat. Alongside the award-winning Tipping Point, featuring music composed by Adem Ilhan & Quinta (who have previously worked with Radiohead, Hot Chip and Bat For Lashes), will be Switch, a daring new debut devised by a group of young people from North Manchester and developed with the help of Ockham’s Razor artistic directors. In keeping with Contact’s mission to put young people at the heart of all they do, the young locals have been learning dance, martial arts, and acrobatics and trapeze skills from the company, now applying their new-found knowledge to create Switch’s shifting landscape of labyrinths, pathways and barriers, and exploring the themes of division and integration. Co-commissioned by The Lowry and London International Mime Festival, meanwhile, full-length show Tipping Point puts five performers high above the heads of the audience, where they transform long metal poles into a rooftop landscape of forests, cross roads and pendulums that are climbed up, swung from, walked along and clung to in this thrilling and breathtaking extravaganza, described as ‘magical’ and ‘spellbinding’.

Wed 15–Sun 19 Aug, Contact In The City, Upper Campfield Market Hall, Campfield Arcade, Deansgate, Manchester, M3 4FN, Tel: 0161 274 0600, 7pm (& 2pm Sat 18 & Sun 19), from £10, www.contactmcr.com

Tipping Point from Turtle Key Arts on Vimeo.