Following a highly successful run first at the Nottingham Playhouse then at London’s Almeida theatre, Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s Nineteen Eighty-Four transfers to the West End’s London Playhouse Theatre, in collaboration with Headlong.
“I don’t want to have to think about race.” Young Jean Lee says about her latest production, ‘The Shipment’, which is being performed for the first time in the UK as part of London’s LIFT festival, opened to a predominantly white, middle aged, upper middle class audience.
The vampire and the awkward teen. At first glance, Let the Right One In is befitting of a genre that has captured the nervous hearts of teenagers worldwide, probably because its pointy-toothed protagonists reflect the typically tween- and teenage gripes of alienation and otherness that muddle the path to the adult world. Let the Right One In explores these themes, but opens them up to a much wider social context, successfully including us all in the question of ‘otherness’ and what it means to be human.
A shy hero. Grizzled older hero that is far more important than he initially seems. Schoolgirls in uncomfortable-to-watch attires. Cyclical storytelling. Your Mother. Pyramid head. A plot that defies expectation and ends comfortably unsatisfyingly. Prophecy. The good people at Fuel Theatre have just staged a japanese video game, but that description by no means does The Roof justice.
In Good Company, is a production composed of six new works by the dancers of the Hofesh Shechter Company: five live contemporary dance pieces and one film. Maybe it’s because I’m not a dancer. Maybe the only way you can enjoy, or even understand what is happening on stage is if you’re a dancer.
“Welcome to Rome ” is how Octavius Caesar frostily receives the long-absent Mark Antony on his return from Egypt, where he has since forsaken his responsibilities as a triumvir of Rome – and as a husband – for the love of Queen Cleopatra and the sensuous and lavish decadence of Egypt. Antony and Cleopatra is a play of two civilisations, indeed two different worlds, and Jonathan Munby’s production serves this conflict well, flitting seamlessly between the austere and definitively masculine world of Rome and the impassioned and restless Egypt that is Queen Cleopatra’s.
“No specific words can express the meaning of tonight’s performance. Rather, these pieces are permeated with our conceptions of ‘the body’ and physical practice. So what your eyes perceive is exactly what our hearts hope to express.” This quote from Tao Ye expresses exactly what has been achieved in his creations ‘4 and 5’. It was impossible to encapsulate a single moment or meaning as separate from the whole, such was the fluidity of the piece. Thoughts, feelings, associations would spring to mind but none could define or describe the entirety of the dances.
Close your eyes. Imagine you are back in time, a young child again, sitting on your grandfathers’ knee whilst he slowly drinks his whisky, savours every deep breath from his roll up, and tells you a story, a story you have heard a thousand times before, his favourite story of the Wild West that you’ve grown to love over the years just as much as he. That is what watching ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ felt like; an overwhelming sense of familiarity, but unique in its presence in the Western field.
© Jethro Compton Ltd
Sadler’s Wells welcomes Bruno Beltrão and Grupo de Rua with their show Crackz, part of this year’s LIFT festival that aims to gather globally unique artistic experiences in London. Crackz definitely fits in this category of unique experiences. What was created on stage can classify as a new genre for this Brazilian dance group, who specialise in combining hip-hop and breakdance with influences of many other styles such as capoeira, martial arts and contemporary dance.
Ernest and the Pale Moon is the latest play from the upcoming theatre company Les Enfants Terribles. They are an interesting and imaginative company, and the only way I feel I can describe this play is as storytelling for adults.There is a large emphasis on physical theatre throughout the show, in particular mime.
