Performer Alice-Therese Gottschalk sits on the edge of the stage with a finely decorated box on her lap. She closes her eyes and slowly, almost ceremonially, opens it towards us. Fellow performers Raphael Mürle and Frank Soehnle hover in the shadows just behind her, holding whatever is inside by fine wires. With precise and delicate […]

A cannonball rolls down a ramp and crashes into a length of steel scaffold that’s bisecting the stage. A piece of guttering clatters to the ground, rebounds and comes to rest. A mechanised accordion hee-haws across the floor, breathing raspily. And then the performers appear – men, wearing a kind of uniform of grey skirts, […]

Almost without being noticed, an unassuming elderly man crosses the stage and starts addressing us in a thickly evocative Spanish accent. Carles Cañellas tells us that Small Suicides was made in 1984, that he saw it performed by its Hungarian creator, Gulya Molnàr, several times, and that Molnàr gave him permission to take it on. […]

I was fortunate to catch the final twenty-five minutes of Aurora Nova’s large scale show in the ‘Hogwarts’ school quad. The location is superb. Tucked behind the vast gothic buildings, it is an enclosed square with a dominant tower and corner staircases heading spookily upwards. There is a sense of awe and hush from the […]

Dik Downey and Adam Blake look pretty much how we expect clowns to look, with over-sized trousers, too-big boots, red noses, and hair as if they’ve just stuck their fingers in a plug socket. And to begin with, they behave pretty much as we expect clowns to behave: all silly walks, happy-sad faces, and roping […]