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Only Bones – Daniel Nodder 5***** - One4Review
one4review | On 11, Aug 2026
Only Bones is a strange, otherworldly experience. It is exactly why I come to the Fringe.
The show opens with a light held between fingers, glinting through them as they begin to ripple and dance in time with a throbbing hum.
Before we know it, we’re watching what I can only describe as a finger-play version of the beginning of all creation — except, within moments, you forget you’re watching fingers at all.
You could call this dance, physical theatre or performance art, but those are words we use to put things in boxes. Only Bones really can’t be put in a box.
What follows is a series of extraordinary physical vignettes as Daniel Nodder desperately tries to reach us through his clothing, contorting himself into a strange frame of wiggles and giggles.
Nodder is an astonishing physical performer. There’s body isolation, fixed-point mime, popping, gliding, joint articulation and finger tutting, all performed with such precision that individual parts of his body seem to acquire lives and personalities of their own.
Nodder has such command over his movement that I find myself at one point sympathising with his knuckle.
But the technical skill is only half of it. The choreography takes that extraordinary physical vocabulary and turns it into storytelling.
Movements that initially seem abstract develop their own internal logic; tiny gestures build into scenes, characters and entire worlds before dissolving and transforming into something else.
There is a meticulousness to the construction, but Nodder performs it with such playfulness we can’t help but be enraptured.
A love song from knee to knee, a comet wiping out the dinosaurs, two people trapped in a snowstorm, a wolf attack and someone being rescued by a helicopter.
At one point, a man appears to be travelling on a Ferris wheel of joy and sadness.
At another, the whole thing culminates in something resembling a magnetic dance — or perhaps a magnetic prison.
I’m not entirely sure that’s what either of them were or if there is a defined answer, because Only Bones leaves much of itself open to interpretation.
And that’s part of its magic.
For all the show’s extraordinary technical precision and clearly intricate choreography, it’s still at times possible to get lost , I frequently did, that’s no a bad thing. I’m not sure there’s a fixed native here.
We’re invited to play along with whatever strange little universe is being created in front of us.
I couldn’t take notes during the show because I was so absorbed. It was genuinely impossible to tear my eyes away. I saw people move their videos and get on their feet to get a better view of certain (body theatre – not sure what to call it?) from the back.
This is the type of Fringe show you tell people about afterwards with almost no explanation:
Categorised as one of the “Just trust me. Go and see it. “ shows.
If you’ve got a penchant for the avant-garde, this is the one show you have to see.
If I had to describe it I would describe it as the wiggly jiggly man
Nodder is a talent to be reckoned with.
*****
Reviewed by Stephen Sharp (Sharpie)
Assembly Roxy
Until 30th August (not 19th)
20.20 (1 hour)
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