Lyn Gardner - The Guardian - Monday 11th August 2003

Pandora 88 - St Stephens, Edinburgh

Two men. One box of roughly 1.5 sq m, about the size of a small lift. It doesn't sound all that promising, does it? But in the hands (or rather bodies) of Wolfgang Hoffman and Sven Till of Fabrik, who gave us the wonderful Fallen last year, this is one of the most captivating shows in Edinburgh. A small box becomes a whole world. Out of their terrible togetherness and more terrible aloneness, these two men find an accommodation, a strength and a tenderness so acute that watching it develop is like seeing open-heart surgery carried out on stage. Brian Keenan's book about his Beirut hostage experiences, An Evil Cradling, has already inspired one classic piece of physical theatre in the Right Size's Do You Come Here Often? Here, along with Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the same book is the starting point for an extraordinarily inventive dance theatre show. In Pandora 88, imprisonment eventually proves to be a kind of liberation as the two men find ways to overcome the confinement that binds them together like conjoined twins. At first, they revert to childhood, playing absurd games of tag and hide-and-seek in this tiny space. But they are only really hiding from each other, trying to escape the inevitable. Eventually, the games change as the two men start to accept rather than resent their mutual dependence, and instead of fighting each other, fight for their freedom. In one of the show's most beautiful sequences, they become as one, so entangled that they are indistinguishable from each other: four legs, four arms, two hearts and one shared, unbearable pain. Shattering.

Jann Parry - The Observer - August 2003 Pandora 88 The finest Fringe venue for physical theatre is St Stephen's church, thanks to the Aurora Nova mini-festival there, now in its third year. Its director, Wolfgang Hoffmann, performs as one of two men-in-a box in Pandora 88, Fabrik company's take on Brian Keenan's book, An Evil Cradling. Burly Hoffmann and slight Sven Till learn to accommodate each other in a confined cubicle, acknowledging their interdependence. Male duets are not uncommon in contemporary dance, but this pair push the boundaries emotionally as well as physically. Their embraces move from manacles to games, wrestling holds, reassurance and intimate respect. It's a gripping piece.

Joyce McMillan - The Scotsman - August 2003

Trapped in a box, Wolfgang Hoffmann and Sven Till are inspired by the limitations of their confine and create a stunning piece of visual theatre.

The magic of Pandora's box

The show starts in near darkness; two men enter an empty space, move around a little and then find themselves standing together in a Perspex box, perhaps 5ft wide by 10ft high, at the centre of the stage. Apparently they cannot leave it and must co-exist there as best they can. Yet, from this simple beginning, Wolfgang Hoffmann and Sven Till, of the Fabrik Company of Potsdam, create a 65-minute piece of movement theatre (fabulously well directed by Andrew Dawson, with music by Matthias Herrmann and laced with occasional gruff lines of dialogue) that rises to breathtaking heights of intensity. It has that rare quality of seeming to shift on its axis and take with it our whole perception of an idea or an issue that has been haunting our society for decades - in this case, the idea of maleness or masculinity, of how men relate to each other and how they form an identity. At first, the show seems like a fairly conventional resume of thoughts and body-language about masculine behaviour, although some of the visual images they create are stunning. The two men tussle, play, edge around one another, try to get on with their work, ignore one another, and get involved in a long game of imitating animals and objects. However, as the show moves into its second half, it makes a huge leap in dramatic intensity. The men begin to rebel against their imprisonment, to hurl their whole bodies against the walls in a desperate display of frustrated human strength and energy, to support one another in great straining climbs towards freedom, and, in their desperation, to reach new levels of emotional and physical closeness, of an almost sexual tenderness. These are images of what men can do with and for each other, in their strength, their playfulness, their courage and the sheer beauty of their musculature and their bodies, that seem to me to break new ground in the gender debate, beyond simple polarities of hardness and softness, machismo and compassion. And when, at the end, the chance of freedom finally comes, it's with a sense of threat, exhilaration and beauty that is simply unforgettable.