Colliding particles, sunshine on a forest path, overlapping monologues, a beautifully lit empty theatre, and a candle lighting ceremony – Dorothy Max Prior samples the delights of the installation programme at Brighton Festival 2021  The invitation came in early May for a press viewing of Semiconductor’s latest installation work, Halo. So used was I to […]

  OK, first weekend done… I’m sure you know, but in case you don’t: the Brighton Festivals (that is, the Festival, the Fringe, House, the Open Houses, and various stray programmes that get tacked on, such as the Caravan showcase) amount to the biggest arts festival in England, second only in the UK to the […]

Telling a story through parallel voices is a familiar theatrical device – witness Michael Pinchbeck, Chris Goode and others. Here, though, we have a story told by a theoretical cat (Schrödinger’s, no less), the writer/actor Pieter De Buysser, and a character called Sebastian who Pieter tells us is fictional. The main story belongs to Sebastian. […]

The initial framing device of Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage is strong: three characters with a different take are our guides to the Anglo-Saxon epic poem. Each has their own intonation and style of speech; I particularly like the literary academic who speaks in that odd way that Air Cabin Crew do, emphasising certain words […]

Directed by Neil Bartlett and staged amid the sombre shadows and silhouettes of Paule Constable’s lighting design, Britten: The Canticles is an intense evening of music visually animated by physical theatre, dance and film. The piece has been devised in collaboration with leading choreographers Scott Graham and Wendy Houstoun, as well as controversial war artist John Keane, […]