What is curious about The Bear is the way it creeps up on you – how you think it’s about one thing and halfway through you start to realise that it’s really about something else entirely. The story goes that Angela was a solicitor’s clerk, working on a murder case. On her own one day with the […]

As Varmints opens, there’s stage smoke, moody edgy music, and a yellow coated fella on stage. Enigmatic changes of light turn the world green and verdant; there’s birdsong, and a dawning beauty like the wonder of daybreak. The first character is joined by three more. Who are they? Creatures? Explorers? Not knowing the story, nor who […]

Time – a long time, a short time, recent times, past times. Time – a moment that never passes. The past no longer exists, the future has never existed. There is only the present moment. The present is always – this. Yet still the hands of the clock turn, still the minutes tick by, still […]

‘Have you used a GPS system before?’ asks the steward, handing me a smartphone and a pair of headphones. Alarm bells ring: I never have much luck with Google Maps. ‘Me’ is me, she explains, and there’s a white dotted line to follow. When circles show up on the screen, I’m to move towards them […]

‘You are nothing but a big zero,’ says the Fool to Lear. I paraphrase, apologies Mr Shakespeare. But this is not, you understand, a version of King Lear, although that was the starting point – a period of research supported by the Royal Shakespeare Company, in which Clod Ensemble discovered that what they didn’t want […]