Battersea Arts Centre, London
Ocean Chillingworth’s show depicts a brutal fight that turns into something altogether messier

This much we know from the title: there will be blood. We’re given plastic ponchos to wear, if we want, in case of splatter (washable). The small performance area, lined with seats, houses a white armchair, a metal coffee urn and a forlornly potted tree. On the chair sprawls the bloody corpse of Ocean Chillingworth, hair, face, body, arms, hands, legs, feet all glistening deep red. On the carpet hovers a ghost – that is, someone draped in a white sheet with cut-out holes for eyes. Should we be really unnerved, or really not?

It’s the kind of question that runs through Blood Show, the second of Chillingworth’s planned Extinction Trilogy (after Monster Show and before Nature Show), which relishes its own ambivalence. The first half establishes an action loop. The ghost (Tim Bromage, though we never see him) guides the ghoul-white figure of Craig Hambling towards Chillingworth. They fight, viciously, with kicks, bites and gouges, grunting and yelping horribly as Bromage sings a gentle folk song. Hambling throttles Chillingworth until their body goes limp. He tweaks the body back into position, straightens the tree pot and lets the ghost guide him off again. And the cycle repeats. It’s shocking at first, but each iteration makes it less so, not only because we become increasingly aware of the compositional choreography and theatrical artifice, but because the two performers grow more playful, by the last loop gamely throwing punches at each other, metres apart.