Author Archives: Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com

blackSKYwhite: Omega

A mocked-up circus tent and the sounds of a late-night carnival, mulched, distorted, as in a dream: Offenbach’s Can Can, a crowd laughing then booing, a dog barking, machinery churning, the wheels of a Ghost Train grinding metal on metal. Coloured beams break the fourth wall to illuminate seats in the auditorium, casting a pattern of what looks to be an oscillating and unravelling DNA thread. Drum roll. Enter an ageing ringmaster and a pair of dancers dressed in a caricature of 19^th century Toulouse Lautrec splendour, all ruffled petticoats and buttoned boots. Roll up, roll up – the show has begun! Time is of the essence! Time is tight!

What looks to be burlesque romp dissolves into something far more dangerous. Over the next hour we meet a succession of extraordinary characters, a kind of Tarot of distorted archetypes: Adolph and Rudolph, a two-headed tuxedoed tap-dancer; Boatswain Bob, the living skeleton rising from a bag of rags; Agasfer, a melancholy conductor of the universe who spears himself through the ears, head, mouth and (no!) eyes; Omi and Naomi, the ‘spiders of the universe’ who spin the patterns written on the sky. Then there’s the lovers: a silver-headed bride (Judith) wielding a dagger, poised over a table of neon skulls, accompanied on a futuristic cello by a headless robotic Holofernes. ‘Man is but a machine and woman is but a toy’.

In this and other sections there is a strong echo of blackSKYwhite’s first massive Edinburgh Fringe hit, Bertrand’s Toys, winner of a Total Theatre Award in 2000 – particularly in the beautiful and extraordinary physical performance by Marcella Soltan, whose limbs seem able to bend in any direction, and whose movements switch from seductive swerves to robotic jerks in a flash. Other imagery – particularly the nightmare nursery visions of mis-shaped babies, terrifying teddy-bear Pierrots wielding trolleys, and startling stabs of candy-pink lighting, remind me of their Aurora Nova/London International Mime Festival hit The Anatomy of Insects. As is often the way with blackSKYwhite shows, one wonders how so much can be created onstage by just four performers. And as always the stage sings with moments of extraordinary transformation, as human bodies twist and turn in every direction, the distinction between flesh, costume, mask, or animated object constantly breaking down, so it is often hard to work out exactly what we are witnessing. Is that a person dancing the skeleton’s sickly stick-legged dance of death, or a manipulated puppet?

Omega is a truly total theatre. The dramaturgy of the piece is driven by the three-way powerhouse of soundtrack, lighting design, and physical action. The soundtrack is created by experimental musician Michael Begg, an extraordinary multi-layered production embracing pre-recorded texts in Russian, Romany and English (including the voice of legendary alternative musician Little Annie) and musical sounds of all sorts. Electro Swing, Balkan Beats, and schmaltzy showbiz favourites like ‘Pink Elephants on Parade’ vie with soulful musical saw and ear-splitting electronic drones. It marries well with director Dimitri Aryupin’s scenography, together creating a textured assault on the senses, the modern embodiment of Artaud’s vision of a theatre that regales the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams.

Perversely played in the daytime, Omega is a moon energy show. Its interest is the nature of time, and in particular the fear of the finite (ageing, death, decay, the constant tick of the clock: ‘a hand turns on a face and the face is watching you’); and the even greater fear of the infinite (imagine a snake eating its own poisoned tail forever, to paraphrase a line in the soundtrack). Along the way it explores the battle of binary divides – light and shadow, matter and anti-matter, various conjugations of heavenly and not-so-heavenly twins.

Omega is a fairground ride: thrilling, uncomfortable, scary. It’s also a philosophical reflection on the nature of existence, and an exploration of the dark matter that continuously heaves and swirls just below our conscious awareness. It’s not circus, it’s not cabaret – it’s deep dangerous disturbing theatre. You will emerge blinking into the daylight shaken and stirred. Be warned.

Voices: Nir Paldi of Theatre Ad Infinitum

Nir Paldi of Theatre Ad Infinitum, in his own words

Ballad of the Burning Star (premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe 2013) deals with my generation of Israelis who were born into the reality of the occupation. This project is something that has been brewing in my mind for years. When I finished my military service at the age of 22 I left Israel for Paris to study at the Lecoq School. In a way, leaving Israel and becoming an independent adult correlated.

Leaving Israel gave me a new perspective and a freedom of thought that was difficult to find while I was there. A lot of things about the politics, history and the Israeli / Jewish narrative suddenly started looking very different. I wanted to find a way of giving a theatrical form to this new perspective. The research for Ballad of the Burning Star started almost three years ago when George (Mann) and I went into a rehearsal space for six weeks in 2010. We spent most of the time talking about memories from my life, my family history and Jewish / Israeli history.

Theatre Ad Infinitum’s co-director George Mann and I were both overwhelmed by the enormous sadness, anger and confusion I carried with regards to my national, cultural and religious identity. We realised that this project hits me very close to home and that I’d need time to find some distance in order to give it a universal and accessible theatrical form.

In the months that followed these six weeks I was doing a lot of thinking: I first thought of performing the show in drag with an all-female chorus whilst travelling in India in 2011. George and I were on a train. At one of the stations a cross dresser came on the train and started performing a strange routine – she was fiercely clapping her hands together by the ears of the passengers shocking them with the sound. The passengers would then either give her some money and she would touch their heads, or ignore her and then she’d look into their eyes and whisper quickly looking like she was cursing them. Apparently there’s a special caste for men who dress like women; they live together in groups and make their living by begging or selling their bodies. This is when I first had the idea of using drag for Ballad. A man dressed as a woman, a man that does all he can to expose his softer, rounder less offensive ‘feminine’ sides. I thought that this was a good metaphor for the complexity of the situation in the Middle East, where the absolute truth has so many forms and it is hard to grasp. It would also function as a mask – a sort of alter ego from which to tell the stories: a woman occupying a man’s body.

In order to explore the tension between collective and personal consciousness I realised I would need to have more people on stage with this character that was starting to come together. Some people with whom she could play power games and fight over territory. In turn they could take their revenge and do the same to her.

I identified a sort of a ‘political triangle’: the audience, the drag queen and her backing-singers.

The idea to use only female performers came from the thought that it would further emphasise the complexity of the situation. As an audience we watch a man (although dressed as a woman) controlling five women, which sets alarm bells in any liberal mind, and we start hating him a bit; but at the same time he/she is very entertaining and outrageous so we can’t stop watching. This reminded me of the relationship Israel has with Palestine, and the rest of the world.

I have finally identified three parallel narratives: the personal story of the main character and his family, the historical Jewish / Israeli events occurring over time, and the story of the cabaret troupe who are telling these stories. It’s taken just over three years to make it, but I’m excited to finally say that Ballad of the Burning Star is now ready to open.

Meanwhile, we have continued to tour Translunar Paradise. We just got back from a three month tour in Brazil. We’ve been to Rio, Sao Paulo and Brasilia. It was an incredible experience. We will be touring Translunar in the autumn around the UK, Norway and Brazil again. We will be travelling to Non-Stop Festival in Moss, Norway to perform Translunar Paradise and Ballad of the Burning Star on 20 & 21 September. Translunar Paradise is touring the UK this autumn, dates and venues will be announced very soon!

And we will soon start working on a new non-verbal piece commissioned by the London International Mime Festival (LIMF) that George will direct/write – to premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe 2014, with a London premiere at LIMF in January 2015. The current working title is Dis\Connections and it will focus on the connections and disconnections that occur between deaf and hearing communities in our society.

We’re trying to find a physical theatrical style/language that connects deaf and hearing audiences, who might ordinarily struggle to communicate, through a common language they never realised they even shared: the body. We began researching / developing some ideas in June this year and it’s looking very exciting.

Ballad of the Burning Star is at Pleasance Queen Dome (venue 23) 31 July – 26 Aug 2013 (except 13 & 20) @17.15. For tickets see here, and for more information on Theatre Ad Infinitum see here. Nir Paldi was interviewed by Dorothy Max Prior, by email, July 2013.

The Fringe is Nigh

The arrival of the Edinburgh Fringe brochure at the Total Theatre editorial office always arouses mixed feelings – a frisson of excitement, of course, at the thought of a month-long bonanza of theatre, but also a sense of dread at the prospect of wading through something the size of a telephone directory, trying to work out what shows should be on Total Theatre’s radar.

Sometimes it’s obvious – a listing in the Dance & Physical Theatre category helps – but often it isn’t. And some companies are notoriously bad at selling themselves: it can be hard to tell what’s being presented in some cases. There’s also the additional element that some shows nowadays aren’t listed in the official programme – there is, for example, a whole raft of work presented as part of the Forest Fringe, which this year is based at the Drill Hall in Leith, that isn’t a part of the ‘official’ Fringe. More on that later…

There are so many shows to potentially mention that we are restricting ourselves here to previous Total Theatre Award winners or shortlisted companies; work by companies that we are familiar with; and work previously favourably reviewed by Total Theatre – plus also flagging up a few key venues and organisations, and noting a few wild card ‘unknowns’ that tickle our fancy. For full details of all these name-checked shows, see the Fringe website.

So we’ve done some of the work for you – here’s a round-up of Total Theatre recommendations and suggestions, for your edification and enjoyment.

First to say is that there’s a whole raft of circus work in Edinburgh this year. Previous Total Theatre Award winners NoFit State bring two shows to the Fringe, the large-scale delight Bianco (set in the company’s own spaceship tent at Fountainbridge) and a funtime lunchtime offering called Noodles, on the menu at New Town Theatre. Circus producers Crying Out Loud are offering a trio of circus or visual theatre pieces at Edinburgh’s hottest venue, Summerhall, including La Poème by bearded lady Jeanne Mordoj of Compagnie Bal. Crying Out Loud are also presenting Pirates of the Carabina’s family-friendly circus show Flown at the Underbelly in Bristo Square. Also at the Underbelly are Australian favourites Circa with Wunderkammer, and at Assembly Mound the marvellous (and oft reviewed by TT) Gandini Juggling with Smashed. Australian circus favourites Casus return with their Awards shortlisted hit Knee Deep, and Aurora Nova / Circle of Eleven are back with Leo.

Pirates of the Carabina, Flown

Circus-related, we should also mention former Cirque du Soleil clown, Julien Cottereau, returning to the Fringe with his signature mime show Imagine Toi, an old favourite seen and loved by Total Theatre on numerous previous occasions. A couple of wild-card circus possibilities are Edinburgh-based Voice Box with Grendel, a circus-storytelling interpretation of Beowulf; and Adelaide Fringe hit Fright or Flight, presented at the Assembly Roxy.

Theatre Re’s The Little Soldiers looks interesting – less actual circus, more circus as a metaphor – a story set in a circus tent of sibling rivalry to the death. Rhum and Clay have found favour with TT at previous Fringes and they return this year with an ‘absurdist clown’ show, Man in the Moone. Also absurdist, probably darker and more disturbing (but who knows?), Total Theatre Award nominees 2012 (best emerging company) Clout are back at Summerhall with their latest show, The Various Lives of Infinite Nullity, which ‘cannibalises’ the literature of renegade Irish writer Flann O’Brien. Another former Awards nominee at Summerhall is the ever-enterprising Dudendance, with a site-specific piece called This Side of Paradise, exploring obsessive visions of the apocalypse.

Summerhall deserves its own special mention: in the past three years it has established itself as the most enterprising new venue in Edinburgh, home to much of the physical, visual and experimental theatre and performance that Total Theatre has always supported. Its eclectic programme includes a very wide variety of forms, set in many different spaces. There’s Daydream, a buzzing bees installation in the courtyard; Dark Matter, a journey through the night garden with Scottish animators Vision Mechanics; and Major Tom, featuring the wonderful Victoria Melody and her trusty hound Tom. Late openers at Summerhall include David Rosenberg’s Ring; Common Wealth’s Our Glass House, a site-specific performance about domestic abuse (staged in a residential house); The Paper Cinema’s live animation delight Odyssey; and Vincent Dance Theatre’s Motherland (all previously reviewed by Total Theatre). There’s also Made in China’s Gym Party; Michael Pinchbeck’s The Beginning, the end of his trilogy which started with The End; and Sue MacLaine’s Sid and Valerie, in which the actor/writer (previously nominated for a Total Theatre Award for Still Life) shows another side to herself as her male alter-ego, the one-time vaudeville star Sid Lester (aided and abetted by Emma Kilbey as Sid’s wayward daughter Valerie). We’ve noted that some Summerhall shows haven’t made it into the main Ed Fringe brochure – for example, Beating McEnroe by Chris Goode collaborator Jamie Wood – so it’s worth taking a look at their own programme here. If you have just a day or two in Edinburgh, you could do worse than booking yourself into a batch of Summerhall shows…

Another Summerhall highlight is Somnambules and the 7 Deadly Sins – an ‘epic journey through time and art’ – by Yael Karavan and Tanya Khabarova, both formerly of Derevo (who have won more Total Theatre Awards than any other company). This show was reviewed and loved by Total Theatre in an earlier incarnation, and we are very excited to be seeing the results of a year’s intensive redevelopment. Note: this show rather oddly got listed under Music rather than Dance & Physical Theatre, one of a number of interesting anomalies in the Fringe brochure!)

More Russian superstars: BlackSkyWhite won a Total Theatre Award for Bertrand’s Toys many years ago, and have subsequently been nominated for Astronomy for Insects, both of which were shown to great acclaim at the London International Mime Festival. They return triumphant to the Fringe with another dark and broody piece of highly physical theatre, Omega, a ‘hoochie coochie carnival for the end of time’, presented at The Assembly Rooms on George Street.

There’s a number of enterprising dance artists at Edinburgh this year: Dan Canham (formerly of DV8 / Punchdrunk / Kneehigh) presents Ours Was the Fen Country, which combines music, movement and words ‘to evoke the mysterious landscape of the Fens’ at Dance Base; h2dance return with a dance-comedy piece, Duet, at Zoo Venues; and Lost Dog / Trestle collaborate on It Needs Horses / Home for Broken Turns at Zoo Southside. All these shows are late-openers as part of the British Council Showcase, which runs 19–26 August at various venues.

As is Idle Motion’s Borges and I, another show previously shortlisted for an Award (Best Newcomer). Their new show, That Is All You Need to Know (listed under Spoken Word rather than Theatre, for some reason) has a full run at Zoo Southside. Also crossing the divide between theatre and spoken word comes Kate Tempest with Brand New Ancients (another late opener). We note also that some companies are premiering new shows whilst also presenting previous successes: Total Theatre Award winners Look Left Look Right are at Fringe 2013 with The Love Project, but from the 12th onwards there’s also another chance to see You Once Said Yes.

Hunt & Darton Cafe

Sitting somewhere between movement-based theatre and performance art: Mamoru Iriguchi’s Projector/Conjector is a multimedia live art piece inspired by Swan Lake and Star Wars, a winning combination; and Rosie Kay and Guilherme Miotto team up with film-maker Louis Price for Sluts of Possession (best title at this year’s Fringe?). If live art is your thing, then make sure you catch Sylvia Rimat’s I Guess if the Stage Exploded… Also live art-ish are the various goings on at the Hunt & Darton Cafe, located once again on St Mary’s Street. During the day there are various installations, living artworks and interventions happening. In the evening there are ‘proper’ shows (if we are allowed to make the distinction), including Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton’s own Boredom, and the always-entertaining Richard DeDomenici with Popaganda. The Hunt & Darton Cafe (part of the enterprising Escalator East to Edinburgh programme) is this year under the auspices of the Pleasance.

Other Escalator shows at Pleasance include two previous Total Theatre Award winners with new shows: Gecko with Missing, a ‘warped journey into the depths of the human psyche’; and the ‘audacious, provocative’ Bryony Kimmings and her 9 year-old niece Taylor taking on the global tween machine in Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model. Previously shortlisted company Badac Theatre are back with another hard-hitting piece of visceral political theatre, ANNA, which investigates the death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Other Escalator East shows we’ll be looking out for are storyteller extraordinaire Chris Dobrowolski’s All Roads Lead to Rome, the lovable Little Bulb Theatre’s Squally Showers, Flabbergast Theatre’s Boris and Sergey II (dark and twisted puppet theatre for grown-ups), Liz Crowe’s 30 hour durational piece Bedding Out (eat your heart out John and Yoko), and – also durational, this time over 26 days (eat your heart out Bootworks) – vickiweitz’s 26 Marathons in 26 Days, that is 26.2 miles as a marathon should be, daily run up and down the Royal Mile. God help her. If you can’t face the thought of trying to find her there amongst the ardent leafleteers and high-school dramatists, then you can follow her blog.

Badac Theatre, Anna

Meanwhile, over at Northern Stage at St Stephen’s, the admirable Third Angel have requisitioned a minibus for Cape Wrath, the story of Britain’s longest bus journey; and Daniel Bye (who was shortlisted at last year’s Total Theatre Awards for The Price of Everything) returns with new show How to Occupy an Oil Rig, a ‘playful and provocative contemplation on protest’. There’s also the opportunity to see The Price of Everything, which is back for a short run – as is Third Angel’s What I Heard About the World. Also at Northern Stage, The Paper Birds combine physical theatre and new writing, no doubt with their customary skill, in On the One Hand, which gives us six women of different ages exploring the ageing process. The space between new writing and physical/devised theatre is also the territory of Move to Stand, whose Collision of Things comes to Pleasance Courtyard.

The Traverse, Edinburgh’s year-round home of new writing, has in recent years pushed its boundaries in the direction of ‘total theatre’. This year’s programme includes a number of companies of interest, including David Leddy with Long Live The Little Knife, ‘an uplifting caper about forgery, castration, and drunkenness’; and one of the first ever Total Theatre Award winners, Theatre O, with a vaudevillian reworking of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, offering a ‘heartbreaking but hilarious’ look at secret terror cells, political conspiracy, and police bungling. Multi-award winners Ontroerend Goed are this year presenting Fight Night, an interactive piece billed as ‘elections as theatrical gaming’; and their producer David Bauwens is also moonlighting at Summerhall and elsewhere with an enterprising bill of new Belgian work called – yes, you’ve guessed – Big in Belgium. Another interesting curated mini-programme at this year’s Fringe is the BE (Birmingham European) Festival programme – a selection of past winners presented outside of the festival’s own context. This includes the winner of the BE Mise en Scene prize 2012, Fantasy No. 10 – The Beauty of Life by the Granada-based Vladimir Tzekov Stage Action Laboratory.

Over at the Pleasance, the brave and true Belarus Free Theatre will be tackling the darkest manifestations of human behaviour at their Capital Punishment Café, which will be offering electrocution, hanging and death by lethal injection. Not for real, we hope. Also taking a satirical, perhaps even Brechtian, look at politics using song-and-dance and drag is the always interesting Theatre Ad Infinitum, who present Ballad of the Burning Star, company co-director Nir Paldi’s investigation of his own identity as a gay Israeli man. This looks to be a very different kettle of fish to their previous Edinburgh Fringe (and indeed worldwide) success, Translunar Paradise – although this resourceful company have embraced many different theatrical styles over the years, so we shouldn’t be surprised if one show is very different to its predecessor; that’s been their story all along. The new show is playing at the Pleasance Dome, where you will also find Lucy Hopkins with her one-woman physical theatre/clown show Le Foulard (The Veil), which Total Theatre knows very little about – but we’re interested in finding out more! Another one-woman show, Claudia Jefferies’ Jewel, is inspired by the beauty pageant culture in the USA, and described as ‘grotesque and funny’. We hope so. Also hopefully funny (it’s listed under Cabaret) is Evi Stamatiou’s solo physical comedy show Caryatid Unplugged, which combines traditional Greek music and clowning, and which is part of a programme of solo shows presented at the Hill Street Theatre, a very lovely little venue north of Princes Street. Other Cabaret treats include Briefs: The Second Coming (which might be camp as Christmas but features some top-notch circus skills); the return of La Clique at The Famous Spiegeltent; and Miss Behave’s Game Show. If warped cabaret is your wont, then look out for EastEnd Cabaret’s Dirty Talk; Frank Sanazi’s Das Vegas Night II; and The Worst of Scottee, over at the other Assembly in George Square. And no, I don’t know if all the various ‘Assemblies’ have mended their differences or whether it is still turf wars.

Fans of puppetry and object animation are advised not to miss the legendary Philippe Genty company with Dustpan Odyssey; Stan’s Café The Cardinals; and Tortoise in a Nutshell’s Feral. Other puppetry delights include the previous Award winners Bunk Puppets with Slapdash Galaxy: 3D; and The Wrong Crowd (shortlisted as best newcomer for The Girl with the Iron Claws) who return to the Underbelly with HAG. Total Theatre also has its eye on Brazilian puppetry/visual theatre show The Weaver, which is at New Town Theatre. Jammy Voo’s Birdhouse features puppetry, clowning, live music and a whole lot more – and comes from a company we’ve been watching for a while.

Other goodies: over at the Assembly Roxy, street theatre company Wet Picnic premiere their first indoor theatre show, Death and Gardening. Another Assembly one we’ll be wishing every success for is TOOT’s Ten Out of Ten, co-created by dANTE OR dIE’s Terry O’Donovan, who’ll be hot-footing it up to Edinburgh after showing his company’s site-specific success I Do at the Almeida 31 July – 2 August. Cutting it a bit fine aren’t we, Terry? (This one is at Assembly Mound.)

There’s a number of interesting music-theatre pieces: Awards shortlisted show Beulah returns to Fringe 2013; previous winner Cora Bissett and The Arches present Whatever Gets You Through the Night at The Queen’s Hall; Théâtre Sans Frontières bring a satirical musical about financial crises called Canary Gold to C Chambers; and Pippa Bailey’s international music-theatre experiment BiDiNG TiME returns to Summerhall in a new incarnation.

And so – that’s our trawl through the Fringe brochure for you. It just remains to flag up the Forest Fringe programme, which is not part of the ‘mainstream Fringe’ and which can be viewed here.

Highlights include Tim Crouch, fresh from the Almeida; perennial favourites Action Hero; Forest co-directors Andy Field and Deborah Pearson with their own solo ventures; and a trilogy of works from Brian Lobel. Most shows are on for just a few days, and entrance (if you can fight your way in) is by donation.

The Total Theatre team will be frantically racing around Edinburgh reviewing and blogging over the next three weeks, so if you can’t make it to the Fringe you can keep up with it all here on the website. Finally, if you want to find out more about the Total Theatre Awards see the dedicated section of this website where you will find information on the application and judging processes. We will be posting lists of Awards nominees after 15 August, and winners after 22 August.

And so, once more into the breach dear friends… the Fringe is nigh!

Theatre-Rites: Bank On It

‘I wish everyone could see this bank, so that they could learn from it, like I have’ reads a little note inside an illuminated glass jar – part of an installation of wishes that is the final image of Theatre-Rites’ Bank On It. As the young audience leaves I loiter, reading more and more of the messages that have been ‘banked’ for the future. There are hopes for a new baby brother, a sick mother, a Nan with cancer, and ‘for my family to be happy’. There are general wishes for the planet and the human race, the to-be-expected hopes for world peace and an end to hunger and violence, and there are some very personal ones, such as a desire to be ‘the best footballer in Arsenal’.

Bank On It starts out as a show about money and ends up being a show about economics, something different altogether! It starts as a jolly children’s theatre romp – albeit in typically clever and well-executed Theatre-Rites mode – and ends as a profoundly moving reflection on what it really means to ‘spend’ and to ‘save’.

At the appointed hour we gather in the foyer of the Rose Lipman Building in Haggerston, East London which boasts the sort of no-nonsense 1960s community centre architecture despised at the time, but now garnering listed-building status. A young man pushes through the crowd to reach the cashpoint machine ahead, but his card is rejected by the ATM (which makes some very silly noises). A woman makes her way through, tries the door of the bank – but it’s shut. She’s cross and asks the audience if they know what’s going on. A guy with a smartphone complains to anyone who’ll listen that the online banking service is down. Someone else tries the cashpoint without luck, more funny noises erupt, and through the screen we see the head of a bald man with glasses popping up and down. (The young audience are delighted, screaming wildly by now.) Eventually Mr Bank Manager (the perfectly cast Danny Schlesinger) escapes his ATM prison and runs away – cast and audience following excitedly.

We’re led into the offices of the ‘bank’ to witness the confrontation between our band of five angry customers and the manager. ‘What’s happened to our money?’ is the question everyone wants answered. The bank is the old-fashioned type, with shelves of brown cardboard storage boxes, and pinboards stuck with yellowing receipts and statements. The aesthetic is one familiar to fans of previous Theatre-Rites shows such as Shopworks. The story unfolds with the help of lots of lovely puppetry and object animation, including a clunky mechanical Mr Regulator (with puppeteer arms, courtesy of Mohsen Nouri) who struggles to get his sums right; a whole library of beautiful pop-up books showing us mortgaged paper houses and the illustrated outcomes of shopping sprees; and a surprising filing cabinet that comes to life and demands that the ‘customers’ fess up about their financial histories. This block of the show has a feisty, almost Pantomime feel – cries of ‘he’s over there!’ as the manager runs hither and thither, and raucous squeals of enjoyment as boxes and files seem to move by themselves.

Eventually, the bank manager is persuaded to open his vaults – and we are led in small groups into a low-lit wonderland in which taps drip into empty baths, plastic bags become sea creatures, and miniature houses are lit with switches that children are invited to turn off. The mood changes, and the atmosphere becomes almost reverent. It is here that we learn that when we talk of ‘saving’, there is a lot more to save than money – and if we don’t start to save our earth’s precious resources, the day will come when money will buy us nothing.

What is wonderful, though, is that despite its serious message about the depletion of our valuable resources, and the need to save something more vital than our pennies and pounds, Bank On It maintains a strong sense of positivity and empowerment. With both the final wishes-in-bottles scene, and a preceding beautiful and heart-warming ritualistic gathering to throw pennies into a well (as a copper-penny glitterball twirls above us and bubbles float all around), we are invited to take on the notion that we have the power to be the change we want to see in the world.

Combining forms gracefully – feisty physical comedy, cheery songs, witty puppetry, beautiful installation work, and gentle promenading – Bank On It is not just great children’s theatre, it is great theatre, full stop. And although I missed the press show and ended up seeing it late in the run, that turned out to be a bonus as I found myself mixed in with the most robust and enthusiastic young audience you could imagine (kids from a local Hackney primary school).

Directed by Sue Buckmaster and designed by Hannah Clark (with puppet design and making by Michael Fowkes and Billie Achilleos), Theatre-Rites’s Bank On It is another grand success from a company who have paved the way for innovative children’s theatre for almost two decades – funny, thought-provoking, and awe-inspiring all at once; a truly magical journey exploring the true meaning of economics. Oh and you get a lucky penny to keep – or even better, to pass on: ‘Find a penny pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck. Give the penny to a friend, and your luck will never end.’ Let’s keep that money moving around – and let’s not forget that money can’t buy you love.

Bank On It was co-commissioned by Theatre-Rites, the Barbican and CREATE, in association with Warwick Arts Centre and the Economics Department of the University of Warwick. www.theatre-rites.co.uk

Circus – a Tale of Two Cities

This May saw two major UK festivals – Brighton Festival and the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (NNF) – presenting a hefty amount of circus work from across the world. Unsurprisingly, Quebec and Australia were heavily represented…

The Quebec crew first: it’s hard for outsiders (and even insiders) to understand how a circus company could come all the way from Montreal to perform in England in May and not be booked by both Brighton and NNF – but what do I know? I realise that festival directors and their producers have all sorts of complex factors informing their decision-making. Be that as it may, Brighton opted for presenting Cirque Éloize’s Cirkopolis, whilst NNF went for the new Les 7 Doigts de la Main show, Séquence 8.

Cirque Éloize have always been one of my favourite circus companies, and Cirkopolis is a dazzling delight, although there are criticisms to be made. Inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, it takes ideas and themes from these two films – mechanisation, consumerism, state control versus individual freedom, the rebel outsider, the role of fantasy in an over-ordered world – to create a series of thematically linked vignettes. A gorgeous design (by Robert Massicotte, who like many Éloize associates has previously worked for Cirque du Soleil) uses projection as a scenic backdrop: a wonderful Modernist cityscape cum factory is created, cleverly stealing visual motifs from both films – perhaps a little more weighted towards Metropolis’ towering skyscrapers, art-deco angles, Escher-like staircases, turning cogs, and giant ticking clocks.

There’s much to admire. One of the highlights of the show is a cyr wheel act by Angelica Bongiovanni who spins around the stage inside her wheel (a kind of overgrown hoop) with dizzying precision. She’s a vision of other-world loveliness, the machine-cog projections behind her shifting to a fantasy circus-sideshow painted-with-light backdrop of red and gilt drapes as she takes to the wheel. Another favourite scene is a witty and whimsical dance of unrequited love played out with a suit of clothes on a coat rail – gorgeous manipulation that takes us to a space between circus and object animation.

A criticism of Cirkopolis for some people is the rigid adherence to traditional male and female roles (this was a bit of a talking point in the bar after the show, the large number of UK circus performers and producers there forming an instant, informal post-show discussion group). This isn’t a big issue for me – most of the time, anyway. Although you could argue that it is a stereotypical image of woman as ‘other’, the gazed-upon object of desire, I find the scene in which a lone bare-footed woman deftly crosses a sea of male hands held high in the air breathtakingly beautiful and poignant (and the soft and sensuous acrobatic and contortionist skills of the female performer, Myriam Deraiche, are extraordinary). But oddly it is in the very scenes where usual gender roles are seemingly challenged that some unnecessary gender stereotyping crops up: for example, a two-person (one male, one female) upbeat Chinese Pole scene with a feisty unisex feel is suddenly cheapened by boy-meets-girl steal-a-kiss-and-get-your-face-slapped silliness.

There was a distinct lack of UK circus companies presented at these international festivals, for whatever reasons, but I was delighted to see that Cirkopolis’ international cast features two graduates of English circus schools, juggler-clown Ashley Carr (Circus Space) and Samuel Charlton (Circomedia), who gets in all over the place with hand-to-hand acro, banquine balancing, German wheel, Chinese Pole and (along with all the boys) teeterboard. This grand finale teeterboard act is impressive, but again there is a bit of a question about the traditional gender divide – beefy boys bouncing off the boards whilst these fabulously talented circus girls kind of decorate the scene, posing in retro swimwear. It’s lovely, but…

You’ve probably gathered that acrobatics, and equipment such as the various wheels, boards and balancing/juggling kit, are the mainstay of this particular Éloize show – there is little aerial work. This, though, seems to fit thematically with the wheels-of-industry man-machine theme very nicely. The show is presented for two evenings and a matinee at Brighton’s largest venue, the Dome, and on its last night receives a standing ovation from what looks to be a full house. There is most definitely a big audience for circus at the moment!

Meanwhile, over in Norwich, NNF have plumped for Les 7 Doigts de la Main’s Séquence 8, also from Montreal, also a UK premiere. Sometimes the hardest shows to write about are the ones you love best. With this one I just want to say ‘go and see it before you die’ and leave it that – but I realise that won’t do. Les 7 Doigts (the 7 fingers) are, as the name implies, a seven-strong company of circus artists trained to the highest level. Some of their shows feature members of that core company onstage (or dangling above it); sometimes they stay on the other side of the footlights. The latter is the case with Séquence 8, which sees two of the ‘7’, Shana Carroll and Sébastien Soldevila, sharing a director credit, and a fresh batch of precociously talented young performers set loose onstage, with the show devised around that particular team’s skills and strengths. And my goodness they are an energetic bunch: the cast of eight bounce off, around and through each other with astonishing skill, verve, humour and daredevil bravado. Sitting close to the front, I had my heart in my mouth many times over, marvelling at the sheer audacity of the sky-high lifts, death drops, and ridiculously fast throws and catches that come in relentless waves.

Well, almost relentless – the action is interspersed with an entertaining on-mic running commentary (by clown-narrator, acrobat, musician and all-round multi-tasker Colin Davis) that highlights and gently mocks the world of performance. Yes, it’s been done before – the mix of high-level skill and postmodern interrogation reminds me a little of the late great Nigel Charnock –but it’s done well, and is a clever way to build in breaks in the high-octane action. For example, around halfway through there’s a ‘non interval’, in which our narrator tells us that we can go for a pee or to buy a drink if we like, but in the meantime he’ll be hosting a quiz for those that stay, and ‘the winner gets to take home a performer of their choice’. ‘Question: is Max on the trapeze a) angry, b) hungry, c) not hungry, d) purple?’

They are such a wonderful team and they have so much made this show their own that it is hard to single out individual acts – it’s all brilliant. But moments still with me are Eric Bates’ beat-boxing and blocks-juggling (to Tuung’s Bullets – some great soundtrack choices in this show); Ugo Dario’s gorgeously fluid dance to Julie London’s Cry Me a River, in which he weaves himself seductively through a maze of black sticky tape; a Russian barre act by the sinuous and cat-like Alexandra Royer; a teeterboard act that turns around a comic reflection on philosophical and artistic differences, set to the ghostly sounds of a ship creaking and lurching through the high seas; and the fabulous Chinese Pole work of Devin Henderson – not to mention the moment when he leaps offstage and snogs a man in the audience!

What’s it all about, then? Relationships, oppositions, contradictions, separation and togetherness – life, really. It’s about – everything! In many ways, it’s a show about circus itself – the highs and the lows, the breath and the blows – and thus of enormous appeal to anyone in the biz. But the riotous applause at the end of the show from this Norwich Theatre Royal festival audience proves that Séquence 8 isn’t just for the cognoscenti; it has massive popular appeal. I’d happily see it again and again: a glorious hybrid of astonishing circus, dance and physical theatre, all glued together with a healthy dose of knowing humour.

Over to the Aussies now: back in Brighton, also at a Theatre Royal (the lovely red plush Brighton Theatre Royal) comes Casus with Knee Deep. I’d previously seen this show when it made its debut at the Edinburgh Fringe 2012, presented at a Spiegeltent, and I wondered how it would work in an end-on regular theatre. The answer is very well – even better than at the Spiegeltent in fact, the proscenium arch setting and use of back projections framing the performers nicely. And the show has (inevitably I suppose) really benefited from its year of honing and touring since that auspicious Edinburgh debut last year (which got it shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award). It’s sleek and ultra-stylish, yet still really human, really present. The staging is simple: the minimal projections are actually live-feed video giving us close-ups of, for example, a row of eggs about to be walked upon. Most of the time though it’s down to the simple, elegant scenography of a classy lighting design (lots of subdued golds and browns and blues) to illustrate the bodies moving in space.

This is a young company, but made up of seasoned performers – three men and one woman. That woman is Emma Serjeant, and she is phenomenal. A NICA graduate and former full-time member of Australia’s leading contemporary circus company, Circa, she has it all – grace, strength, power, and delicacy; moving with ease from base to flyer. Not that the three boys lag behind in skill or stage presence – Jesse Scott, Lachlan McAulay and Natano Fa’anana are all a delight to watch, with Natano adding an extra layer of humour to the show with his knowing play on male eroticism (he’s also a member of the all-male circus-cabaret company Briefs). The show has no overarching narrative, but explores notions of strength and fragility, exposure and vulnerability (those eggs feature heavily, bottles and nails also making an appearance!). The core skills are acrobatics and balancing, with some aerial (rope, silks, straps) that is mostly classic moves performed absolutely beautifully, often with a challenge to gender expectations. The acrobalance, though, is astonishing. Sound and image work in wonderful harmony. The recorded soundtrack features found tracks, rather than commissioned compositions, but it’s a track listing showing excellent taste and an ear for the unusual: the quirky crackles of Múm vying with the whimsical strings and breathy vocals of Patty Plinko and Her Boy; the earthy and edgy growl of late-era Gil Scott-Heron contrasting with the gorgeous melancholy piano of Max Richter. It’s a show that has few aspirations towards circus-theatre but instead gets to the heart of circus: skill and beauty combined artfully to fantastic effect.

Meanwhile, in another part of Brighton (well, Hove actually – All Saints Church to be precise), Casus’ fellow Australian company Circa are presenting How Like an Angel. I don’t manage to see it here, but it turns out it is also at Norwich – and luckily I do get to see it there. Which feels perfectly right, as it was commissioned by NNF’s former director Jonathan Holloway – a truly creative producer who had the idea of placing Circa with Renaissance choral music company I Fagiolini, the only brief being that the repertoire be sacred music, and the performance respond to the sites it is presented in (cathedrals, large churches or other places of worship). This show in Norwich Cathedral feels something of a glorious homecoming. How Like an Angel explores the mythologies surrounding those heavenly creatures common to the three great monotheistic faiths of the world (Judaism, Islam and Christianity), messengers of God and guardians of the celestial spheres. It plays (physically and thematically) with the great magnetic pull between heaven and earth, the air and the ground: Lucifer’s expulsion from heaven, Adam and Eve’s fall from grace, Icarus’ doomed flight to heaven. Bodies drop from terrifying heights; voices soar into the highest reaches of the cathedral roof. The audience are free to move around the space, although it is not exactly a promenade piece – once we are in the main space most people stay put in their spot, turning heads from side to side or gazing up into the roof. The interaction between singers and circus performers is handled deftly by Circa’s director, Yaron Lischitz. The singers never look awkward or uncomfortable with their physical tasks – walking slowly through the crowd from different starting points, or (more ambitiously) being borne aloft by the circus performers.

But Angel isn’t Circa’s only show in this year’s Norfolk and Norwich Festival. I return the following week to see the same cast debuting Beyond, a brand new show made for Spiegeltents. Because of the vagaries of the M25 and A11, I arrive in Norwich halfway through the show, so cannot pass a full and fair judgement, but saw enough to perk my interest – and to see that there is an interesting dilemma here…

The setting and staging for Beyond is about as far from How Like an Angel as you could imagine. From the hushed cloisters of an echoing grey-stoned cathedral to a rammed red-plush-boothed Spiegeltent in full cabaret mode: no respectful silence here. From Tallis and St Hildegard to Andy Williams and Frank Sinatra in one quick move; simple and tasteful costumes in plain white silk and black cotton replaced by big white fake-fur bunny heads and Yogi bear suits. It’s a totally different aesthetic, but the shows seem like two sides of the same coin: if Angel is about the thin veil between human and angel realms, Beyond is about the fine line between human and animal – and the aspiration to escape the ground and rise above the bestial; to dream the Impossible Dream (‘to try when your arms are too weary, to reach the unreachable start… this is my quest.’).

What’s odd though – in the section of the show that I saw anyway – is how much of the content from How Like an Angel is repeated in Beyond. Is it because this is inevitable with the same team performing two shows almost concurrently? After all, circus acts with this skill level take years to perfect. Are Circa banking on the fact that they won’t be getting the same audience for both shows, or that people won’t notice because the costumes and staging are so different? Or is it a deliberate artistic choice – to re-run ideas in a totally different setting to play on that contrast? Who knows! Despite the repetition of the core elements of some of the acts, I very much enjoy the Chinese Pole ascent in a furry bear suit, and the fantastic reversal of male-female base-flyer roles in the acrobalance (at one point, in both Angel and Beyond, one of the women bears three people simultaneously aloft on her head and shoulders). I’m less interested in the clear-glass bowls of water balanced on the bodies and carried around the space – it was an OK image in Angel (resonance of baptism, holy purification, etcetera) but really has no reason I can see to be in Beyond. But it is a new show, and I only caught the second half… I’ll live in hope of seeing it again somewhere soon. (It’s currently, June 2013, playing Wonderground on London’s South Bank.)

Also at the Adnams Spiegeltent in Norwich was the debut of a new cabaret show, Les Enfants Perdus, sadly unseen by Total Theatre as it clashed with Les 7 Doigts, but by all accounts an exciting new addition to the adult-only circus-cabaret circuit. We can also mention in passing that NNF very ambitiously programmed not only the circus shows reflected on here but also extended their reach to the Hippodrome in Great Yarmouth for Compagnie Galapiat’s Risque ZérO. It was a risk to programme so much circus, but a risk that seemed to pay off, going on the sold-out shows I saw in Norwich.

Back in Brighton, a different and very well established circus-cabaret evening runs the length of the Fringe festival at The Famous Spiegeltent’s little sister, Moulin Rouge – yes, it’s the return of the legendary La Clique. Well, I say ‘return’ but there has been much water under the bridge since La Clique first wowed Brighton and Edinburgh (and indeed the world) a decade ago. After many successful years, most of the mainstays of that show, including MC Brett Haylock, hostess with the mostest Miss Behave, the always impressive Ursula Martinez, Franco-Irish chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan, and the various bendy boys and boys in bath tubs that shared the bill with them, left to form rival Spiegeltent cabaret show La Soiree, or to pursue other projects. A crude analysis of the situation from an outsider’s perspective is that Brett Haylock kept the stars and Spiegelmaestro David Bates kept the name, relaunching the brand with new artists.

So – how is the new La Clique? Not bad is the short answer – not as strong as those early legendary line-ups, but a pretty good evening’s entertainment, with quality circus acts still integral to the show. La Clique always had a raunchy vibe – more circus sideshow than regular variety show – but the new version has tipped over into hardcore burlesque, with verbal sexual innuendo and visual double-entendre ever-present. Take, for example, Scotty the Blue Bunny, whose act is very much what it says on the can: a big man dressed in a skin-tight blue lycra bunny suit, ears and all, who camps about and cracks jokes and does silly things with balloons. There’s an MC who does that excruciating rubber-band wrapping thing on his face, and a striptease act with a surprise ending from someone who would probably like to be the new Ursula Martinez but falls a bit short, although s/he has a demented energy that I enjoy. Magician-comedian Paul Zenon is entertaining, despite doing the same tricks and jokes as seen at La Clique in 2005; and Movin’ Melvin is his usual cheery and lovely self, tapping his way through Ray Charles classics. There’s a good hula hoop act from someone who is not Marawa the Amazing – perhaps she was having a night off – but a good substitution, a feisty girl with great stage presence, and, as her additional tea-cup and spoon act showed, something of the Miss Behave about her.

Sadly the magnificent Mikelangelo was also off duty that night (although I did luckily catch him and his Black Sea Gentlemen in their own shimmering music-cabaret show earlier that week), so that particular evening felt the lack of a quality crooner. The scene-stealer of this line-up was male aerialist Stephen Williams, who opened with a piano-top whiskey-soaked dance, returning later for an aerial straps act in the role of a car mechanic (tyres providing a useful double purpose of set and safety device). There is, inevitably, a trouser-removing moment. Away with you bath tub boys – it’s all about axle grease these days. A nod also to the very talented Wau Wau sisters, a burlesque-circus duet who combine doubles trapeze with audience participation acro in Dolly Parton drag.

From Spiegeltent to circus tent: the darlings of UK circus NoFit State were back in Brighton for the festival month, although this year not programmed into the main festival, as they have been previously, but instead part of the Fringe. It is odd that a show like Bianco by a world-class company like NoFit State was not presented in the main programme, but I am sure there are reasons.

Bianco (subtitled Turning Savage) is, on paper, ‘the story of a great journey inside and outside ourselves… a battle between beauty and brutality’. What we get are all the things we love about NoFit State: a big bouncy cast of acrobats tumbling all over the place; the thrill of being herded round the tent as aerialists swing and swoop above; a rip-roaring and raunchy live band; and the smell of popcorn always nearby. This may be contemporary circus, but it’s also good old-fashioned circus through and through. The company could be the inspiration for the phrase ‘motley crew’: tattooed riggers, gold-toothed ushers, tousle-haired trapezists, bristle-chinned fire-eaters. The downside is the set – a number of no-doubt expensive but cumbersome white scaffolding structures that get hauled around the space, making audience movement less fluid than is usual in NoFit State shows (the performer-stewards often having to explain very precisely where we need to stand to avoid being crushed, rather than the usual organic process of gentle herding we get in other shows). The structures look impressive and are swung and bounced from merrily, but these ensemble routines, although good, aren’t spectacular enough to justify all the trouble moving these things around. That aside, there are (as always) many top quality acts to marvel at: I love Anne-Fay Johnston’s giggly mock-wobbly handstands, and Elena Burani’s elegant rope work. The company’s current roster includes a number of top-notch British aerialists, including Circus Space trained August Dakteris with a big and beefy straps routine, doubles trapeze (well, it was actually an odd kind of moving frame rather than a trapeze, reminiscent of something Ockham’s Razor might use) from Lyndall Merry and Freya Watson, both Circomedia grads. There’s also an ensemble of less experienced aerialists that provide a chorus-line of rope, in line with NoFit State’s policy of integrating performers at different levels of experience into their shows. The design is lovely, with many beautiful images still glowing in my mind long after the lights go down. Lots of white (of course), including a spectacular ceiling-to-floor wedding dress shedding red rose petals, and a chorus of silver-and-white twirling canopied swings descending to the ground.

NoFit State’s writer/director Firenza Guidi seems to have accepted with this production that it is hard to push through a strong linear narrative in a circus performance, which by its very nature is episodic, and has instead gone for thematic links over ‘story’: Bianco feels less of an attempt at a circus-theatre amalgam than either Immortal or Tabu. Which is not a criticism – ultimately, it’s raunchy and robust circus full of thrills and spills, and that’s good enough for me.

NoFit State’s Bianco troupe is a truly international ensemble, featuring artists from Wales, England, Ireland, America, Quebec, Italy, and Portugal. That’s the nature of circus – it embraces the world. It was fantastic to see so many world-class circus shows putting the spring into May’s step in Norwich and Brighton – and great to see so many UK circus artists making their mark on the world stage (or tent).

Dorothy Max Prior saw Cirque Éloize, Cirkopolis at the Dome Brighton, 7 May 2013; Casus Knee Deep at Theatre Royal Brighton 14 May 2013; Les 7 Doigts de la Main, Séquence 8 at Theatre Royal Norwich 17 May 2013; Circa, How Like an Angel at Norwich Cathedral 17 May 2013; No Fit State Circus, Bianco at No Fit State’s spaceship tent, Hove Lawns 27 May 2013; La Clique at The Famous Spiegelgarden, Brighton 29 May 2013.