Author Archives: Lisa Wolfe

About Lisa Wolfe

Lisa Wolfe is a freelance theatre producer and project manager of contemporary small-scale work. Companies and people she has supported include: A&E Comedy, Three Score Dance, Pocket Epics, Jennifer Irons,Tim Crouch, Liz Aggiss, Sue MacLaine, Spymonkey and many more. Lisa was Marketing Manager at Brighton Dome and Festival (1989-2001) and has also worked for South East Dance, Chichester Festival Theatre and Company of Angels. She is Marketing Manager for Carousel, learning-disability arts company.

IF you can dream…

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, entertainment and easy living together for the London overspill. Now branded MK, it was officially ‘opened’ in 1967.

It seems all hard surfaces, sharp angles and straight lines, easy to decode: you’ll walk through one of the many shopping malls past the office blocks and chain restaurants, via the commercial or theatre district. So far so ordinary, but MK has deeper rhythms running through it. Midsummer Boulevard sounds like a joke name for the central strip, until you learn that it frames the rising sun on Midsummer’s Day – accompanied by Morris dancers, one hopes. Signposts in the park lead to Avebury Avenue or Silbury Street. There is mystery bubbling beneath the surface.

People work, play and shop here, but seem to live off the main grid, in nearby tower blocks or in villages that remain in the landscape. A festival provides a great opportunity to both gather people in and to take them far beyond their lived environment.

As a bold statement of intent, Milton Keynes’ International Festival ( IF) has plonked a great big circus tent in the middle of the shopping mall programmed with a range of family friendly shows at affordable prices. Sur Mesure’s Fillage is usually performed outdoors but translates well to this environment. The Belgian company has two top-notch acrobats, a versatile juggler, and a lovely horn-based band playing their own compositions, with lyrics telling of desert islands, whale hunts and oceans deep. Here the trampoline is the sea, playfully tossing the tumblers into somersaults that reach way up to the top of the tent and down onto the floor below, inches from the feet of children watching, entranced. The costumes give a nod to the maritime theme, and look sturdy enough to prevent a few bruises: they even match the interior colour scheme. Fillage neatly blends songs with action without losing pace – the musicians have some physical involvement too with good comic use of the French horn. If the show lacks some audience interaction by being in a seated venue, it’s partly countered by the tent’s gauze side-panels that generously let shoppers watch and join the applause at the end. It’s a sweet half-hour of skills and thrills.

The Democratic Set. Photo Anna Tregloan

Also in the shopping mall, Australian theatre company Back to Back is making The Democratic Set, a new work commissioned by The Open University comprising filmed portraits of local people from various walks of life. Performers occupy a cube and the camera runs across on a dolly track capturing story and movement. I watched a young martial arts expert show off her kicks. IF, and producers The Stables, have made sure that a real cross-section of people are represented, building relationships with refugee and homeless groups to get their participation. There are three days of filming before the film is edited and screened. Yes, it puts people in boxes, separately, but the space is theirs to do or say what matters to them. The end result will be a great document for the people of Milton Keynes; a visual diary of life in 2018 with a clean and compelling aesthetic.

In contrast, For The Time Being, by Schweigman& with Slagwerk Den Haag, flings a group of people into a box and makes them get on together. Human relationships are at the heart of the Dutch company’s work – another show of theirs, Blaas, which I reviewed at Brighton Festival (May 2018), similarly coaxed the audience from passive viewer to participant, though with less physical contact.

For The Time Being. Photo Jochem Jurgens

In For The Time Being we’re like a gaggle of kids at a party, trying to figure out who is in charge, and wondering what on earth is going to happen next. We enter an art gallery exhibiting what looks like Duane Hanson’s hyper-realistic sculpture. I was always very good at musical statues and grandmother’s footsteps but no way could I hold a dramatic pose for this long, let alone freely drool. It’s a relief when the human sculptures spring into life and begin their games with us. Whilst obviously super fit, the performers have no hint of staginess about them – they’re an interesting-looking bunch of thirty-somethings in casual clothes. Speed and stillness are the essence of a piece that wants us to experience time, and, whilst it’s a simple metaphor, the way the show combines the rush and the freeze is compelling. It continually surprises and is subtle in its switches from involvement to alienation, the only sounds being breath and the squeak of rubber shoes.

There is visual variety too, with patterns emerging suggestive of the Central line in rush-hour or a disorderly bee-hive trying to find a queen, held by a pool of light. The performers have exquisite timing and precision, with supreme spatial awareness antennae. There is a current of danger – you might easily get bumped and need to stay aware – but no threat, just that bee-like buzz. We look at each other and nervously giggle. As the show develops, the cast gets bolder and there is contact. I’m picked up and carried at great speed across the not-overly-large space then dropped. The audience joins in, picking up actors, making connections. Together we ebb and flow like this until a sudden shift happens. As with Blaas, the ending is a theatrical coup that gives the space to us. Time really does slow down as the audience group contemplates its communal response to the situation it is in. Boxes are involved. I’m told that audiences behave very differently at the end of the show from country to country: in Holland they are boisterous; in Germany obedient; and now, in this UK premiere, we’re an odd mix of both.

That I’ve no idea how long the show lasted is perhaps the best accolade – I was there, being in the moment for that time, and I’d happily be there again, for another party in another town.

Up in Campbell Park, IF has built Festival Central, a multi-flagged arena of tents and deck-chairs, Spiegeltent and cinema dome. In the Arabian Tent, IF Creative Director Bill Gee is talking to a trio of producers about the impact of Brexit, current and future. Alison Woods from NoFit State Circus says she’s turning down European bookings for next year because of uncertainty. Dries Verhoeven, whose highly political ghost-train piece Phobiarama is on here, relates the trouble his cast encounter leaving Holland on the basis of how they look, despite all being Dutch.

The only graffiti I’ve noticed in ultra-clean MK has been Brexit-related slogans chalked on pavements, such as: ‘No Deal means No Jobs.’ A faint hammer and sickle was spray-painted on a park bench. Is the town harbouring a sub-culture of revolt alongside its pagan origins? Bill tells us that he has deliberately programmed more European and foreign events than in previous years. We hope it’s not now or never.

La Cocina Publica. PHoto by Adelano

The way that art can bring us together is warmly demonstrated by Teatro Container’s La Cocina Publica. This Chilean band of cooks, theatre makers and musicians pitch their container in a space accessible to a community and invite locals along to swap recipes and stories, to make decorations, to put on a show and share a meal. First seen in the UK in Tilbury Docks, it makes its touring premiere in West Bletchley, on a patch of green near the community centre and the local shops. Here I meet Keith from Yorkshire who is a bit nervous about being MC at the show on Saturday. There are ladies sharing food memories at the tables and I write down mine; others are making aprons from strips of coloured fabric. Doing the groundwork with the community and then just letting the Cocina set-up and get on with stuff, allows a very natural relationship between residents and visiting company to emerge.

People are curious to know what this oldy-worldy kitchen is doing in their manor, what language these exotic looking people speak, why is that man is building a giant table. There are kids prying amongst the pots and pans, community police officers sipping iced tea. Personal histories are uncovered, triggered by the memory of boiled beetroots or fried onions. I chat with kitchen chief Juan about the politics of agriculture and food production. I’d love to see the show that emerges, a mix-tape of recorded stories and poems with Juan on guitar, flags and banners made on-site and 200 people sharing food as the culmination of a process of social integration. You’ll be great Keith. You’re in great company.

Taking people out of their built environment and into nature is the core of Jony Easterby and his fellow artists’ large-scale installation For The Birds. It took over a woodland atop the Sussex Downs in Brighton Festival 2017 and now animates an area of Linford Manor Park just outside MK. The relocation reinforces my opinion that this is a truly wonderful work of art. The individual elements are joyful in themselves but it’s the curation that is so winning.

The setting here is quite linear and follows a path through the park lined on one side by back gardens and on the other by the Grand Union Canal. Occasionally a cyclist whizzes past. It could be distracting but it’s a credit to the artists and the curators that it somehow adds to the experience; it heightens the weirdness of our encounters with, for example, a flock of origami cranes or the squeal of circling fireflies. The audience walks slowly and quietly, finding space as it moves from jungle to rainforest. At points the installations are as simple as just a light up a tree-trunk, or some pretty leaf lit to show off its shadow, encouraging you to look more closely at nature. It’s easy to forget there are miles of cable hidden here – no speakers are visible, yet sound is everywhere.

Where have the parrots gone, the cages are empty but surely I can hear them calling? Cheep cheep chirp goes the Morse code bird. In Kathy Hinde’s film, a Bavarian bird whistler is doing a wood-pigeon and getting a song back from the distant trees. Most pieces are subtle and similar in scale: you can get up close to see tiny bellows open and close with a cuckoo’s toot, or watch the recorders singing. Walk-ways are defined but there are twists and surprises along the way, along with changes of medium – there’s even a human communing with nightingales at the end.

It’s the sculptures using feathers that charm me most: Mark Anderson’s Feather Dervish exploits their simple structure and amazing strength; beautifully illuminated as they spin so very fast they almost dissolve. I could watch them for hours. For The Birds transforms the landscape whilst staying in harmony with it. The art works with, not against the woodland and flora, and this is what makes it so bewitching. For a festival that values and celebrates the richness of everyday and extraordinary encounters, it’s a great contribution.

Leaving the park, I passed a stone circle folly, chunks of old rock from the ancient quarry. Perhaps it’s keeping an eye on Avebury and Stonehenge, and on MK glittering away in the distance.

For the Birds: Photo Shaun Armstrong

Featured image (top): For the Birds. Photo Shaun Armstrong.

Milton Keynes’ International Festival took place 20–29 July 2018. For further information, see the website.

Thick and Tight: A Night with Thick and Tight

Naming your company something so un-searchable (believe me, I Googled) is a serious mark of intent, and beneath the grand Guignol make-up and extravagant costumes, Daniel Hay-Gordon (Thick) and Eleanor Perry (Tight) are creating something seriously good.

The trio of performances opens with a modernist ballet, Queen Have and Miss Haven’t, pitching Queen Victoria against Miss Havisham in a mourning battle. Beautifully framed on the small stage with hooped gowns (by Tim Spooner and Yolanda Sonnabend) just skirting the walls, and limbs missing each other by millimetres, the striking couple go full-blast for pathos. Hair wrenching and breast beating their way through complex choreography that is full of gesture and expression, they compete for the misery prize. Whose loss is greatest, the young widow or the jilted bride? Messiaen’s stirring Turangalila Symphony is a tremendous score for them to dance with and against. Lit with a rich colour palette that makes great use of shadows, it’s a thrilling ride.

The Princess and The Showgirl is another interpretation of the lives of others, which is Thick and Tight’s particular interest. This time it is Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe. The parallel journey of these two unfortunate females intercuts text from Marilyn’s films and interviews with Diana. Being cleansed of make-up and lavish wigs we can see how gloriously expressive the performers’ faces are. Hay-Gordon excels as Marilyn, expertly lip-synching lines from interviews and films, capturing her flashing eyes and wide smile. The piece is elegantly structured in the way it mixes film extracts, including a hilarious snogging scene from Some Like It Hot (Tony Curtis is played by Thom Shaw) and verbatim recordings. ‘Can you cook?’ a male voice asks Diana. ‘Well, I did a cookery course’ simpers Perry, mischievously doe-eyed. Prince Charles talks out of his arse, of course; Michael Jackson (a convincing Harry Alexander) moon-dances his eulogy to Diana, of course. There is drama and tension as the women are hounded and cornered, reflected in movement that switches from sensuous to rugged. Perry is all angles and pointed feet, maintaining dignity whilst dying inside. Hay-Gordon is a voluptuous siren gradually being diminished, arms swirling and back arching. A strident duet played against a film of a road tunnel may not be subtle but it works and how those eyes shine in the lights. Those pale blue eyes, as the final music track goes (thanks, Lou Reed). Daniel and Eleanor’s eyes look out at us – the characters have left the stage, the dancers remain, and that final look will definitely linger on.

It’s a bold and generous move to programme someone else’s solo into your own show to cover your costume change, but Radical Daughters, made by Thick and Tight on one of my all-time favourite dancers, Julie Cunningham, works beautifully as a counterpoint between Thick and Tight’s own performances. Cunningham’s poise and technical ability, a highlight of many Michael Clark Company works, is eloquently at play in this piece about Claude Cahun (whom she uncannily resembles) and Marcel Moore. Tim Spooner’s costume of long-johns with a pink behind and a pink palm is a bit of a puzzle, but Cunningham would be an electrifying presence on stage in a tea-towel. Look at that extension! Admire that line! There is emotion in every movement here, from a slithering, humped crawl across the floor to deft leaps and whip-fast turns, timed to the beat of Neu!’s propulsive score.

Once again the Marlborough Theatre demonstrates the might of its programming muscle (you can decide which muscle) and whilst it is a privilege to see work of this stature in such an intimate space, Thick and Tight could and should be filling bigger theatres. Original, inspired and fantastically talented, their star will surely rise.

Sh!t Theatre: Dollywould

I saw a snippet of this show in preview a while ago and marvelled then at how a simple snip of fabric from a vest could make such a fabulously appropriate costume. In economy it’s up there with Liz Aggiss pulling all of her costumes, and more, out of her pants. It makes a statement about the female body and performance that is both sassy and comical, which is pretty much how the modern world views Dolly Parton. There’s an ear-shattering moment late in Sh!t Theatre’s entertainingly chaotic show when Dolly’s body and appearance are picked over by male interviewers in the most sexist language imaginable.

It’s a given that Louise Mothersole and Rebecca (Becca) Biscuit would base the sixty minutes of Dollywould around Dolly Parton’s distinctive look and sound, her music, how much she is a construct of her time, how she fed an industry and built an empire. They do all this of course – but being Sh!t Theatre, they do so much more.

So we have Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, butting up against Dolly Parton look-a-likes and Dolly dolls, and Dolly herself as a created being. Very little is known about Parton’s private life: there’s a husband she rarely sees and a Judy she shares a room with on tour. Might she be gay? Of course – just listen to the lyrics of ‘Touch Your Woman’! We have death, courtesy of the Tennessee Body Farm, conveniently located next to Dollywood, to remind us of what we leave behind. Parton has made sure her legacy survives in countless Dolly branded gifts and merchandise, let alone the unforgettable ‘Nine to Five’ which titled the inevitable jukebox musical.

We have musings on fame and stardom (the show is Sh!t Theatre’s self-proclaimed mainstream cross-over hit), and on sexism and feminism, exhilaratingly delivered by the couple wearing their familiar white-face make-up, plus woolly wigs and pink vests with boob holes in. The stage is a messy white romper room spattered with clothes and balloons – a swing seat becomes an abattoir hook.

Louise and Becca vocalise in unison Parton’s answers to a probing 1977 interview by Barbara Walters. Every nuance is accentuated making you almost hear Parton’s thought process as she fields another personal brickbat. They harmonise beautifully, even though the mandolin is out of key. Other commentators have their words performed with added speech affectations, a device which is oddly thrilling.

A film of the company’s road trip to Dollywood provides the backbone of the piece and both helps and hinders the storytelling. It’s funny and revealing, but the frequent switch of focus between screen and stage slows things down and it sometimes seem a struggle to pull all the various themes together. There are moments of clever narrative interweaving: the photocopier malfunction (hinted at in the film) and the description of tattoos hardening into dead skin which loops back to the Body Farm episode satisfy. I do miss the intimacy of Letters to Windsor House. This previous show and most of their earlier work – from the first experiments seen at The Basement in Brighton, through to the Total Theatre Award winning JSA (Job Seekers Anonymous) in 2013 – had been built around personal experience, so Dollywould is a move in a different direction. In pulling off that tricky transition from small- to mid-scale, Sh!t Theatre have proved themselves capable and successful theatre makers. They sit alongside other pioneering young feminist performance anarchists such as Get In the Back of the Van and Rash Dash with their own special character and popular appeal.

Ladies of Sh!t Theatre – long may you continue to knock us out with your great voices and brilliant comic timing. Behind the enormous false boobs and shaggy wigs, you have a lot to say, and you so it so well. Dolly would, no doubt, approve.

Tom Adams and Lilian Henley: Elephant and Castle

A man and a woman. A husband and a wife. A double bed. An audience.

John and Yoko’s agenda for 1969’s Bed-In for Peace may differ wildly from Tom and Lilian’s in Elephant and Castle, but as a married couple, then on honeymoon, they perhaps asked similar questions of themselves when planning the work.

Because this is a properly personal and revealing show about the shared space of the marital bed and how the night there is spent. It’s vulnerable territory for the performers. How much are you willing to share and how will it affect your relationship? The line between your real and your performing self is inevitably going to blur. Factor in what you want the audience to experience and to take from it, and you’ve made yourself a bit of a hard bed to lie on.

Fortunately for theatre, if not for the couple, is the fact that Tom’s slow-wave sleep parasomnias interrupt their repose with great comic effect. His somnambulant grunts, shouts, words and actions often terrify and sometimes amuse Lily and disrupt her own sleep. Why does this happen and how will they cope?

The story is told through delicate songs and economical text that interweaves his story with hers and includes a bit of science and somnambulist history.

A bed centre-stage is the set and occasional backdrop. Lily is on piano and Tom on guitar. Recordings of Tom’s sleep-talking feed through as starting point or illustration. The songs are spare and often haunting, especially those delivered in Lily’s crystal clear voice with its huge range and clipped vocal precision, familiar to many from her work with 1927. She describes Tom as a golem in one song; a nice touch for those in the know. Tom quips and smiles, all the while alert to the potential harm or irritation he causes his wife and others with his unusual and uncontrollable behaviour. It must be so strange to hear your recorded voice spouting about potatoes from your subconscious and to know that you’ve been walking around naked barking like a dog. As someone who once woke a friend by shaking her and shouting ‘Give me back my camera!’ I can sympathise with them both.

The songs feed the narrative, without ever dipping into musical theatre territory. They swerve sentimentality too, something that Cora Bissett’s Midsummer, another song-based lovers duet performed on a bed, positively mined, to lesser effect in my view.

We hear from Dr Ian Smith, the Papworth Hospital sleep expert, and Tom’s brother Mark pops up in sleep talk. Tom’s condition is hereditary and is affected by stress and various stimuli that they will have to navigate through in their lives together.

If the songs are rather too similar tonally and the pace a little, well, sleepy, this is nonetheless a joyful hour. A film of Tom sleepwalking projected onto a wrinkled sheet doesn’t work, but first night’s allow for such things. You want to be a bit closer to them too: the big proscenium arch stage frames them nicely but isn’t exactly intimate.

Playful yet deeply and sincerely felt, you can’t help but love them both. The closing duet, Another World, where their voices have hints of Mary Margaret O’Hara and Mark Lanegan, has a refrain ‘please don’t shake me’. It’s a thing of beauty and leaves you feeling if not shaken, certainly stirred.

Schweigman&: Blaas (Blow)

Ever dreamed you were being smothered by a giant marshmallow? Me neither, but this is one of the many thoughts or sensory images that might occur when watching Blaas…

Categorised as dance in the Brighton Festival programme, it is a dance of sorts – between an inflated white cube and an audience, initially seated. Director Boukje Schweigman says her intention is to make us think about our bodies in relation to a space or an object. Blaas, meaning blow or bubble in Dutch, is a collaboration with designer Cocky Eek, who, apart from having a brilliant name, has created a sensational bit of kit with which to fulfil that intention.

It would be unhelpful to say what (ahem) unfolds, as this is a seriously experiential work. I find myself considering scale: the big billowing cube, skilfully manipulated by performer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti, seems delicate in the lofty public gymnasium. I’m aware of it clanking against metal doors and reflecting light from the green netting that separates off the basketball pitch. There’s a feeling of being underwater from that green light and the way the thing sways, lifts and rebounds almost weightlessly, anchored by human limbs inside. Some might find the setting distracting but I like how this workaday environment contrasts with a pristine, almost clinical, otherworldly encounter.

Further transformations take the audience by surprise and increase our anticipation. There have already been confrontations with air-filled fabric and now things are getting bigger, louder and closer. We feel a little in jeopardy on tiered benches as our plastic foot coverings rustle against Jochem van To’s subtle and curious music. His soundscape seeps into your brain, occasionally reinforcing the idea of oceans with whale song and clicks. A boy who looks about ten is spellbound and keen to engage and it’s a shame he’s the only child: the guidance age of twelve seems strange.

That said, I keep seeing body parts amidst the abstraction of form: a bosom with an inverted nipple, a sphincter. Fabric full of air lends itself to these images, especially when gripped and twisted in a fist. You’re never unaware of the person making things happen, and you do get to meet her (she pops out of another orifice), but you can suspend disbelief enough to feel wonder and enjoy working out how it is all done. Who is running around the outside? How are the fans positioned to make such effects? In the central 20 minutes of the show, when we’re asked to just ‘be’ in the chilly space, I think about other large inflatables encountered over years of theatre going. Forkbeard Fantasy’s magnificent pneumatic Blue Woman, The Luminarium becoming a glowing and disorientating space for dancers, the Udderbelly deflating on the Ornate Johnson’s in 2008, turning into a giant purple cow pat…

The masterstroke comes in how the piece resolves. We have all been quite separate for the past hour, thinking about breath or light or nipples (OK, just me) but the company cleverly brings the audience together at the end to the extent that I was I able to blag a lift home from a fellow traveller.

File it under a visual, sensory, performative, disorienting experience then. Or, as my kind driver said when asked why she had booked for this show: ‘I had no idea what it was. I just like the strange stuff.’

Featured photo (top) by Geert Snoeijer.

Schweigman& will be presenting For The Time Being (UK premiere) at IF, Milton Keynes International Festival, on 22 and 23 July 2018.