KICKING off experimental proceedings at Live Lab, the Live Theatre’s season of new works, workshops and ongoing experiments is the tricksily-titled Sawdust and Stardust (say it fast, I dare you). This one-woman show is actually a two-women one, the duo being writer-director Laura Lindow and performer-singer Beccy Owen.

The performance is jaggedly simple and the story compelling. A woman answers an ad in a local paper for a climbing partner. The pair, one whom we only hear (the unmistakable Jane Arnfield), embark on a jolly up a mountain (never named, but a bus stops there, apparently).

Well, I say jolly. It quickly turns to disaster.

Stella our unfit, slightly naive, non-gung-ho sign-up, narrates the climb and its events to an “audience”. She is unsure of the response (and I was a little unsure of who “we” are). The character was right to be wary of feedback, though. Stella’s first aid procedures to help a critically-ill leader on a mountain-top had been rather irregular shall we say.

The soundtrack and also sung lines are huge for this performance. I loved the soundtrack, the audioglimpses of the crucial character we never see, along with ambient music and sometimes the thud of emergency.

Owens is a singersongwriter, as well as an actor and various other fiddlestrings.

Her voice and her singing are undeniably beautiful, but I felt that they had no context within the story.

Here was a grieving, startystoppy no-hoper (in the sense that any of us are).

This piece performed minimally in the studio feels like thrilling new territory. If gaining exposure and support for a writer is like climbing the mountain, then in this season, we the audience are at least dishing out some mint cake after base camp.

􀁧 Until tomorrow. Box office 0191-232-1232 and online at live.org.uk

Sarah Scott