Lisa Wolfe goes to Milton Keynes’ International Festival and samples a smorgasbord of theatrical delights from around the world Arriving in Milton Keynes under a burning July sky, it feels like a town that’s been lifted from California and dropped onto the flatlands of Buckinghamshire. The archetypal new-town, Milton Keynes was designed to bring commerce, […]

PHOBIARAMA say the blinking circus-tent letters on an otherwise plain black pop-up cube in Granary Square, dwarfed by the much larger, calmer, Waitrose sign, under which one goes to get pre-sliced comfort food. It’s a fitting spatial intervention for Phobiarama, Dutch visual artist Dries Verhoeven’s latest installation-performance to be presented at LIFT; the piece, as […]

Animal skulls. An old globe. A bowl of snakeskins. Binoculars. A stuffed hare whose body is stretched out in that unnatural way bodies are hung up before they are roasted, or like a cat waiting to be stroked. A vintage television set. The body of a fox on his hind legs, holding a silver tray […]

Quick quiz! One question. Imagine the world is run by children. Utopia or dystopia? It’s a juicy early summer twilight and on the grass in Mile End, by the pub used as a landmark, clusters of adult humans mill about exchanging masks of pleasant expectation, as though preemptively bemused, being more furtive than usual with […]

Sitting in the west moat of the Tower of London, members of an orchestra are preparing their instruments. Gongs, electric guitars and cellos rest beneath defensive stone walls. Nine vocalists deliver an acapella rendition of Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes, the last note of which is sustained. As it turns into a drone, bearskins emerge from further down the […]