In the ancient Japanese picture-based story telling tradition, Kamishibai, the travelling tellers sold sweets to gather in an audience. For this Brighton Festival show, anyone who sat in the front row was given a lolly, one provocatively pre-sucked by the cheeky Chalk Boy (Glen Biderman-Pam). Chalk Boy acted as scene changer and entertainer, silent throughout, […]

Lost Dog’s dance theatre went global in 2011 with their Place Prize-winning It Needs Horses, which has toured extensively since. Lucy Kirkwood’s Olivier award for Chimerica earlier this year has cemented her reputation as one of the foremost British playwrights of her generation. Like Rabbits, the world-premiering collaboration between them, holds the promise of combining […]

The Bullet and the Bass Trombone is a show about a haunting. A composer stands at the centre of an empty semicircle of music stands. As his story unfolds – and it’s one whose motives and actions feel all too plausible, of postcolonial resentment, civil unrest and murderous realpolitiks – they start to feel like […]

I’m late to the party with this show, much feted at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and have just a few comments to add to Dorothy Max Prior’s summary hot from the festival. David Leddy is known for his creative pushing of site specific performance and it’s very interesting to encounter his work in a studio, […]

Demon, daemon, fiend. Christianity traditionally places the demon, a spiritual entity that can be conjured or controlled, in binary opposition to the good and the godly. Many ancient mythologies see gods and demons as one and the same. In Bali, a black-and-white chequered flag is at every household or temple door, reminding the guest that […]