Amy Campbell’s Leap wants to be more than just dance. The promise is that it’s “a unique blend of dance and story”, one that involves taking the audience into the lives of “compelling characters”.

It’s a big commitment and frustratingly unclear in its delivery. You can see Leap searching for something to hold it all together. You can see the dancers trying to create meaning as well as movement. However well-meaning, the effort feels superficial and distracting.

As the show begins a man, Callum Mooney, runs through the auditorium and, if not exactly leaping, dashes through a thicket of cords covered in shiny knots that catch the light.

Callum Mooney and other cast members in Leap, Neil Gooding Productions, 2022. Photo © Grant Leslie Photography

Other dancers come and go from the wings, stopping to perform acrobatic and robotic movements. Eventually – after too long really – enough of the cords are raised so it’s possible to see more clearly that Mooney is having some kind of internal struggle. He looks around, he twists and rolls on the floor, he makes over-wrought gestures.

Later he seems more laid back as he wanders from...