The title Wolamaloo might suggest bright colours, noisy music, knockabout comedy and loads of fun - but it's not quite like that. Production company Epiphany4 in fact presents a slow-moving, one-man performance of an introverted fantasy: a soul after death on an emotional journey. 'A beautiful reward for a gentle life' is the descriptive subtitle for the piece. 'A coalescence of physical, visual and spiritual art' is the publicity foreshadowing the poetic atmosphere of the show. Memories, romances and life's regrets The set is an extraordinary concept of texture and colour; an installation of artefacts, fascinating curios, intriguing oddities and natural beauty as might be found around a sunken ship on the seabed. Before the performance begins, early arrivers to the audience are invited to walk on stage among the jumble of flotsam and jetsum, pebbles and debris strewn across the boards, and to look up to see white, feather-like bunches floating atop perpendicular blue cords, rising into the darkness above. We take our seats as music - almost inaudible, ghostly - pervades the gloom. We watch, entranced, as a spirit emerges out of the wreckage. Encased in an ivory-coloured coat and trousers (of fashionably ethereal design) David Hallen, as the soul, rises slowly and explores this limbo between earth and heaven, revisiting his memories, his romances and, especially, his life's regrets. David Hallen performs meticulously in this show he has created and directed himself - three labours that only a theatrical Hercules should undertake. Sadly, for much of the marginally overlong performance, I felt his mimed actions too introverted and too slow to engage my interest fully, but the audience in general seemed intrigued. Hallen's hesitant exploration of each new discovery continues too laboriously and too long for my taste, though it is so integral with the delicious music that patience must prove itself a virtue and keep you drinking in the sounds - and watching the actor's admirable, intense concentration. A welcome, fresh force As performance art, and as visual poetry, Wolamaloo cannot be said to disappoint. Phil Vincent's soundscape is outstanding, subtle, even other worldly, yet often jauntily humorous, as befits the show's progress. Hallen adds to the somnambulent air with an interlude on his delightfully mellow-toned tenor horn. He engages both the 'aaaah' effect and the 'hahaha' factor when he feeds a cheeky paper bird and shows us his childlike wonder at the magic of falling snow. Yet waltzing with his imagined lover and examining himself (his imperfections?) in a mirror, he displayed no freshly innovative delights not already familiar from many comparable scenes. To be fair, Hallen does vary speed at times. However, as mime, the show lacks intensity in some parts and as physical poetry, it is too cliched - not quite inventive enough to fascinate entirely through its 75-minute duration. Reducing its length by judicious varieties of pace (preferably guided by an astute and objectively sympathetic director) would surely increase audience enjoyment, though at the end the audience applauded warmly as Hallen took a deserved bow - appreciation for his diligent achievement. One young mother was overheard saying: "It grew on me." Her 10-year-old son was equally complimentary, expressing a prodigious empathy to the theme of 'a dead soul going back over events in his life'. The Epiphany4 production team are clearly a welcome, fresh force in thoroughly professional small-scale theatre and will develop interestingly from this promising stage. David Hallen, likewise, will stretch his invention in future projects, especially if he will work with a proven, astute director who shares his sensitivity, artistic integrity and humane vision. | 
