PLAY REVIEW: Anatomy of Survival ★★★

A woman walks into a café, orders a coffee, and discovers that being misunderstood can be enough to bring the nervous system crashing through the roof. From this tiny social rupture, Anatomy of Survival builds something surprisingly expansive: an agile, funny and faintly unnerving inquiry into how we decide what happened.

Vivienne Franzmann and Frauke Requardt take 22 versions of the same altercation and keep turning the kaleidoscope. Kath Duggan, Bea Bidault and Neil Callaghan shift between eyewitnesses, aggressor and observer, while Stefano Ancora’s live drumming gives the piece a physical pulse; Bodies tense, recoil and erupt, as objective testimony becomes increasingly suspect. Even a bear wanders into the picture.

There is an appealing seriousness beneath the silliness. The show’s central proposition, that our Stone Age nervous systems are doing their best in a world they were never designed for, is both comic and compassionate.

Anatomy of Survival leaves you wondering not simply who was right, but whether any of us ever sees the same world at all.