Ockham’s Razor: Collaborator at Lowry

Ockham’s Razor return to Lowry with Collaborator, an intimate duet crafted and performed by artistic directors Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney – the partnership that has shaped the company over the past two decades.

Marking the final time Harvey and Mooney will perform together as a duo, Collaborator is a distilled statement of shared history, artistic trust and the many decisions, compromises and collaborations that have honed their practice. “For 20 years we have been making circus together,” they say. “Lifting, catching and carrying; stepping on and around each other. We have been dropped and have picked each other up.” The show places that experience front and centre, with a suspended frame becoming the site where their partnership is explored. The result is heartfelt in places and irreverent in others.

Although rooted in Mooney and Harvey’s own creative partnership, Collaborator opens out into something widely recognisable. Anyone who has tried to build something with another person – a piece of art, a decision, a shared life – will recognise the delicate balance of trust, dependence and tension at play. Stripped back to two performers and a single frame, the work brings the emotional reality of collaboration into sharp focus, pairing moments of joy and generosity with the friction that makes working together real.

Formed in 2004, Ockham’s Razor have long been praised as one of Britain’s most innovative aerial theatre companies, with The Times describing their work as “physically thrilling” and The Guardian calling it “full of joy, wonder and delight”. What helps set them apart is that they’ve never relied on spectacle alone, instead centring the human and the real. Collaborator embodies that approach, and crystallises it. After years of large-scale ensemble productions and international touring, they pare everything back here while retaining the same rigour, inventiveness and emotional intelligence that has defined the company from the start.

Produced by Turtle Key Arts, with choreography by Nathan Johnston and costume design by Tina Bicât.