FOUR STARS PointZero is an Oxford-based physical theatre collective with professional artists — and also offers workshops for others interested in performing. They were first seen three years ago in a performance that I found promising, and last Friday it was clear that they have progressed. The first part of the evening was a selection of short pieces conceived and performed by participants in their latest workshop, with five pieces ranging from rap to an Irish prayer.

Recycle is the title of the new, hour long piece that they performed at the Old Fire Station.

On a stage littered with rubbish and old newspapers, we find that this dump is inhabited by three people. There’s Terry (Danny Scott ), an elderly ex-military man who can’t get over his loss of status; Ethel (Natalie Frossard), a faded beauty and former academic who is clearly grieving over some unstated misfortune; and Leeza (Anja Meinhardt), a tormented young woman, probably a runaway. They scrabble and dance and hobble around in the refuse, and, though we don’t know exactly what motivates them now, each give a powerful representation of the character they have become.

Meinhardt is adept at child-like gesticulation and, being a dancer, she is also able to dramatically contort her body in her expression of mental torment. Frossard, who made this piece together with company director Danny Scott, portrays a lost soul. She has a long solo, much of it on the ground, in which she riffles through the debris as though looking for something she has lost — perhaps some vestige of her past. It’s a touching performance, even though we don’t come to know exactly what troubles her, or why she has come to this end. Danny Scott’s Terry moves slowly, mainly sunk in thought and depression. He does it well, but being a man in very good shape, it’s hard for him to come over as wrecked and desolate. Eventually the rubbish will be recycled, but these characters will remain the same.

I look forward to PointZero’s next offering.