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

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.

Working with Alex Soulliere as his friend and translator, Sangirardi desperately tries to get Raut back – and then to stop anyone else from leaving the stage. Is it the music – a mix of live songs and driving electronica – that pulls them away? Lines of dancers cross the stage, striding forward or peeling off into rippling individual moves. They’re unstoppable, always drawn to their fate. Rambert’s dancers are stylish and touching, keeping the show on a knife-edge of humour and desolate loss.

Goat is a ritual to cast out darkness, a kind of Rite of Spring in a village hall. Weaving in songs associated with Nina Simone, sung live by Sheree DuBois, it mixes social awkwardness with frantic rage and grief.

Reporter Angélique Blasco chatters away, commenting and getting in the way as people gather among the notice boards and uncomfortable chairs of Tom Rogers’s set. She’s heard that the ritual used to have a real goat? “We were picketed by animal rights protesters.”

At its premiere, after the summer of Grenfell and terrorist attacks in London, Goat was intensely topical. That first version had more speech, with dancers reflecting on recent events. This thoughtful revival edits out those in-the-moment responses to create a more stylised piece. But it keeps the same sense of bewilderment, of reaching for tenderness and connection while trying to process impossible events.

Until 25 November, then touring until 25 April; rambert.org.uk