The Coolidge Effect, a fifty-minute audio play exploring loneliness, separation and pornography is as close as I’ve come to the thrill of the theatre for months. Like many, I’ve felt starved of theatre over the lockdown period. Yes, NT At Home is great and all, and I love television as much as everyone, but it […]
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia | Royal Albert Hall | Review
Cirque du Soleil’s Luzia bills itself as ‘A Waking Dream of Mexico’, and I might have thought that the ‘waking’ part comes from knowing I’m at the theatre and watching a performance. But there were moments in the show where I simply could not believe what I was seeing, and if someone told me I […]
Vox Vanguard’s immersive performance of The Nutcracker
There are staples of Christmas theatre: pantomimes, Dickens, picture book adaptations and, of course, The Nutcracker. There’s joy in the familiar, but also a sense of stasis – cycles repeating and not moving forward. Vox Vanguard’s production revels in the former while firmly rejecting the latter: this is The Nutcracker reimagined. Firstly – the setting. […]
A Christmas Carol at Scrooge’s Parlour, Immersive | LDN
Fitting neatly into the Christmas work party space, the immersive A Christmas Carol is a good excuse for a meal, with a cheerful dollop of Dickens on top. Jack Witham’s Jacob Marley introduces us to the affair. We’re cast as spirits hired to spook the miserly Scrooge (Alexander Barclay) into changing his bah-humbug attitude to […]
Foxtale Ensemble presents SHIFTY at the Rich Mix Theatre | Review
The term ‘Immersive Theatre’ isn’t well-defined, but, despite some efforts, SHIFTY by Foxtale Ensemble isn’t it. Let’s start with the good: five female actors from across Europe (Greece, Lithuania, Norway, UK) meditate upon city life through movement, monologue and marbles. They evoke characters who notice, forget, search and find. The script is at times poetic, at […]