Reviews

Lucien Bourjeily: 66 Minutes in Damascus ¦ Photo: Lucien Bourjeily

Lucien Bourjeily: 66 Minutes in Damascus

June 24th, 2012 by

‘One of you is a coward,’ declares a deskbound functionary of the Assad regime in a dingy basement office in Damascus. Over his shoulder stares President Assad himself, from a paper poster. Assad is not the coward, at least, not according to his advocate. Someone in the audience is; one of the eight London theatregoers […]

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Forced Entertainment: The Coming Storm ¦ Photo: Hugo Glendinning

Forced Entertainment: The Coming Storm

June 23rd, 2012 by

What is it that makes a good story? This is the deceptively simple question Forced Entertainment coyly pose in the opening moments of new productionThe Coming Storm. And it’s a big one! Their responses are multiple, thoughtful and partisan, as you might expect from a company whose body of work has steadily dismantled many of […]

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Generik Vapeur: Waterlitz

Generik Vapeur: Waterlitz

June 23rd, 2012 by

Generik Vapeur are one of France’s largest street theatre companies. Their show Bivouac (the one with oil drums being pushed down the streets by a tribe of people in heavy blue make-up and grey suits) is a masterclass in how to whip up an audience and create a powerful, if temporary, experience. The set-piece ending is a […]

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Stan's Cafe: The Just Price of Flowers

Stan’s Cafe: The Just Price of Flowers

June 21st, 2012 by

Stan’s Cafe’s work subtly renews theatre’s didactic power. In the lineage of the clever but also visceral montage of cinema-like sequences in The Cleansing of Constance Brown, The Just Price of Flowers presents another meaningful juxtaposition of lives and historical sequences inviting the spectator to join ineluctable dots. The play is set in the seventeenth century in the […]

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Tanztheater Wuppertal, Der Fensterputzer ¦ Photo: Oliver Look

Tanztheater Wuppertal / Pina Bausch: Der Fensterputzer (The Window Washer)

June 19th, 2012 by

I don’t remember a time when I smiled more during a theatrical experience than watching Der Fensterputzer. Originally premiered in February 1997, Der Fensterputzer boasts one of Bausch and long-time design collaborator Peter Pabst’s iconic images: a mountain of heaped red flowers piled twenty feet into the air. It provides a wonderfully inventive, funny and moving landscape as […]

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