Rambert – Death Trap review: This dance double bill is a tragicomic knockout

In Ben Duke’s thoughtful double bill, baffled characters face death and grief – the results are deeply powerful

Rambert dancers Jonathan Wade and Angélique Blasco in Ben Duke’s ‘Death Trap' (Camilla Greenwell)

Death Trap, Rambert’s double bill of works by Ben Duke, is a tragicomic knockout. Cerberus and the 2017 work Goat both set baffled, very human characters against death, grief, the horrors of the world. They’re full of games that become painfully real.

Both use Duke’s trademark mix of dance theatre, and both engage with myth. Cerberus, made in 2022, retells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. It starts before you know it: a pre-show announcement turns into a chatty commentary. Dancer Aishwarya Raut and sign language interpreter Clare Edwards explain that stage right is before birth, stage left is death, with the onstage action representing life. Pause. “I’d like to say, I’m not responsible for this concept.”

But it binds her. Raut crosses the stage, pulling against a rope tied around her waist. As she vanishes, she pulls on her Orpheus, Antonello Sangirardi. He’s sure it’s a joke – a strangely well-rehearsed joke – until he can’t leave the stage, thrown back by “some kind of portal to the Underworld”. Around him, more dancers arrive for the funeral, looking fashionably goth in the black lace and velvet of Eleanor Bull’s costumes.