Tao Dance 4+9 starts with the audience in the dark. And that’s more or less how it finishes, too. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t have any desire to know what’s going on for about an hour, while a group of four, and then nine (hence the title) dancers mosh and bounce around the stage in matte grey and black outfits. Well, I’ve got good news for you. Tao Ye’s piece makes no pretence of explaining itself, having a sense of narrative or characterisation. Heck, are these even people? … [Read more...]
Bromley Bedlam Bethlehem at the Old Red Lion Theatre
Theatre doesn’t have to be enjoyable. I get that. Bromley Bedlam Bethlehem certainly isn’t a comfortable night at the theatre. I was left wondering exactly what I’d subjected myself to. Was it provocative theatre, or was it just uncomfortable? The premise of Rachel Tookey’s hard-hitting play is the idea that mental health issues, specifically suicide, ‘run in the family’ somehow. Or at least, if someone in the family has committed suicide, a second death is 4-6 times more likely. Maybe I … [Read more...]
Michele Sinisi in Richard III at Draper Hall | Review
Is it winter now? Now, is it winter? How soon and wintery is now? Such rambling, semi-incomprehensible, apparently ironic reiteration and reinterpretation laid the tone of the entire 45 minutes of Michele Sinisi’s performance of Richard III. The programme tells us that Sinisi has made the “brave” decision to perform only the first monologue of the entire play. For 45 minutes. Over and over again. For a less tolerant audience, this might beg the question ‘what danger is Sinisi bravely facing … [Read more...]
Avalanche: A Love Story at the Barbican Theatre | Review
Maxine Peake’s one-woman show is something of a plodding, steady snow drift, rather than an avalanche. She tells the story of Julia Leigh’s memoir (the play is adapted by Anna Louise-Starks from a book of the same name) tracking the turbulent and traumatic experience of trying for pregnancy at the latter end of fertility. She begins by hooking up with a partner from years ago. He wants children, and suddenly, so does she. It’s not clear what provokes her decision, and though the play develops … [Read more...]
Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at New Wimbledon Theatre | Review
Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, now nearly 25 years old, is as sharp, sexy and silly as ever. Though audiences might be somewhat less shocked than when this show, now a Christmas treat for families, opened, it doesn’t seem to have lost any of its edge, or indeed, darkness. Despite its Christmas associations and deeply romantic narrative, Swan Lake is a gloomy tale of its forbidden love. Bourne’s productions are united in their subtle but ever so funny satires of high society. ‘Edward … [Read more...]