First up - Bonanza really exists.

With only seven inhabitants, it is the smallest town in Colorado. It also exists as a scale model, raked on to a raised stage and on display above a strip of television monitors, and that's where the art lies.

You could call what passes across those five screens - one for each occupied house in the erstwhile thriving mining community - a documentary. Folk talk to camera about why they live in such an isolated, albeit ruggedly beautiful place. How they pass the days.

What they think of the 'summer people' who fetch up in noisy droves, with kids and quad bikes. Oh, and also what they think of their neighbours ... this is where the art comes subtly into play.

It's doubtful if Berlin, one of the companies in this year's Big In Belgium showcase, ever puts words into anyone's mouth - but the editing and juxtaposing of carefully garnered interview material opens up a motherlode of vitriolic gossip and downright un-neighbourly, even vindictive, behaviour. Turns out the self-contained nature of the on-screen footage is a true reflection of how the residents "keep themselves to themselves" - there's an isolation, here, that is nowhere near as picturesque as Bonanza's wilderness peaks.

By the end, what had seemed a simple, almost naive, exercise in reality TV has warped into a miniaturised epic about the foibles and darker truths of human nature. As for townies who yearn for rural escapes - beware. Some snakes in Paradise wear baseball caps, crack jokes, spout quasi-religious morality ... and then bring down the law on the dudes next door.

At first glance, Jeanne Mordoj looks a bit buttoned-up, although that floral skirt is surprisingly at odds with the sturdy brown heels. Then there is the voice that growls out from the gut. That's not especially lady-like, more "I am woman, hear me roar".

Then come the eggs. Eggs? They pop out - and get stowed away - all round Mordoj's person, so that you assume her solo show La Poeme is essentially a sleight-of-hand comedy caper.

What Mordoj is really juggling with are assumptions about female identity: creating scenarios where the eggs colour her actions with their age-old associations of fertility, domesticity in the kitchen and knowing how to behave - "walking on eggshells" is one of Mordoj's splendidly assertive moments.

Juggling aside, Mordoj is also a ventriloquist and a contortionist. She could easily entertain us for 45 minutes with straightforward displays of those skills. But La Poeme beguiles, surprises and wittily teases at female stereotyping because of how Mordoj manages them. Are those fabulously rippling belly muscles dancing? Or are they powering out birthing contractions? How do those lady-like shoes tally with the hair-tossing, barely-clad being who is writhing as if possessed of ecstatic demons? Mordoj's bravura physicality connects both seemingly disparate states with a "why not?" shunt of her hips and a bounce of her boobs. The final image, where sweat makes the crushed eggshells crust on her flesh, sees her emerge like some primal goddess - the inner force beneath the surface of Miss Prim's little jacket, and a reminder that appearances are never the whole story!

Last year, Clout went for the full spectrum of noir and grotesquerie with How A Man Crumbled. The new piece, The Various Lives Of Infinite Nullity, continues in a dark and sinister vein but has a kind of bare-faced cheek about it.

We are confronted with the malice, cruelty and monstrous self-righteousness of some very drab people who think they are getting back at life - at family, friends, colleagues - by ending it all. Are they joking? Well, like the nasty children that the threesome also portray, the suicidal adults have an amoral, vicious sense of humour. This is hell in shades of smug, destructive grey where blood-letting is the only proof that life exists.

Few groups do absurdity with the wit and flair of Clout. This show is still hitting its stride, but there is no lack of guilt-free pleasure to be had.

All shows run until August 25