As Death waltzes, and someone resembling Frida Kahlo at a Halloween party croons a Mexican ditty, I see the couple in the front row sneak a kiss. It’s ghoulish, as you might expect of a ‘dead people party’ (literal translation), but also kind of cute. I find myself oddly mesmerised, mostly by the woodwind. “That’s how the circle of life and death goes in the Aztec world”, intones our narrator, with unintentionally hilarious glibness. The virtue of ‘Fiesta de Los Muertos’ is that it honours its wacky subject matter, without taking things seriously enough to be sickening. The more sceptical will find themselves wincing slightly at the mysticism, but this show eventually had me yearning for an afterlife. One with flautists.

theSpace @ Surgeons Hall, until 22 Aug.
tw rating 3/5 | [Sarah Murphy]