A bright, full moon shone as I walked to Liverpool’s Unity Theatre to see Wolf Red, the first solo show from Elinor Randle, one half of innovative Liverpool-based company Tmesis Theatre. Even in the city it is impossible not to entertain sublunary thoughts of wildness and lurking threat. By even wilder contrast, Wolf Red is ostensibly about a […]

Well known for a pacy, inventive and playful approach to theatre-making, much of Kneehigh’s previous work has explored and re-presented stories familiar to us through other sources (Tristan & Yseult, Brief Encounter,Cymbeline, Rapunzel, Nights at the Circus, The Bacchae – to name but a few).Steptoe and Son, a Kneehigh collaboration with West Yorkshire Playhouse, represents something of a departure from […]

Puppetship’s Sparkle is a show for very young children, and in fact is not so much a show as an extremely well-managed environment which allows its audience to take in as much or as little as they like. A big white parasol covers the performance area and the audience (parents and their children) sit in a circle […]

I’m sitting in the Battersea Arts Centre in a dark room; through headphones Marco Polo quietly whispers his description of a fantastical city. Fans blow the soft scent of jasmine across the room. ‘Relax into your seat,’ a voice tells me. ‘You are the Kublai Khan.’ We sit for awhile, me and Polo, in my […]

The anticipation was palpable in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall: the Tiger Lillies were returning to the stage, this time providing the music to a version ofHamlet produced by the Copenhagen-based Republique Theatre Company. Being a long-time fan of their music, my hopes were high for this production, and to anyone who is used to watching standard […]