BWW Reviews: FOLDS, Southbank Centre, December 19 2013

Four Lads bicker on stage in a multiplicity of languages - like a bad night in the Green Room at the Eurovision Song Contest. There's a slightly bossy one, a tall one, a sensitive one and a feisty little one. And on that familiar structure, Folds unfolds its extraordinary hour of circus, music, dance and wonder.

Spanish circus company Enfila't's Four Lads - up close they're a bit older than you expect and, for acrobats, much taller too - fold and twist paper, but also bring out contraptions made from heavy lumps of metal and thick cables: real industrial stength kit. And they roll and spin these cradles on which they balance, they cavort and, yes, they still bicker.

And it dawns on us that the Folds of the title is only partly a reference to the folds one can make in the set's ubiquitous paper - it's also a reference to the folds in human bodies, in relationships and even in time, as the cradle rocks back and forth. There's a strange, almost comforting, metaphysical dimension to the show that gives it a thoughtfulness absent in Cirque shows or traditional circus.

For all that arty stuff (I found my mind drifting to Anthony Gormley's Another Place at times), it's also great fun, delivered with the tremendous skills one would expect, but also no little charm. (When the audience get pelted with paper balls, I spotted a few women making a move to storm the stage to nab their favourite boy!) Like the splendid music, mostly played live on a variety of unexpected instruments, the show has a distinctly European feel, but a universal appeal.

Folds continues at the Southbank Centre until 31 December.