Coney’s Early Days (of a better nation) –  inspired by the 2011 UK riots, the Arab spring, Iceland’s crowd-sourced constitution, and the rise (and fall) of Occupy – is set in a TV studio/balloting station/European Congress meeting hall and it is participatory.  Coney propose ‘to put the audience at the heart of their work’; ‘to […]

Running hot on the heals of Auf dem Gebirge hat man ein Geschrei gehört (On the Mountain A Cry Was Heard), also at Sadler’s Wells, Ahnen continues Tanztheatre Wuppertal’s revivals of the lesser seen pieces from their repertoire of works choreographed by the late Pina Bausch. This appears to be the principle strategy as they […]

On the way out of this show I was fortunate enough to meet a French woman who greatly appreciated the talents of the lead actor Tchéky Karyo (star of many films by Luc Bresson, as well as TV show The Missing) – who, she told me, delivered the beautifully written poetry with passion and power. As […]

In 1981 Margaret Thatcher’s government took an intransigent stance against Republicans in Northern Ireland, notably allowing ten men to starve themselves to death in Long Kesh prison. One inmate who just missed that unhappy episode was Patrick Magee, but the effects of a long and violent battle for independence led him to plant a bomb […]

Guruguru is a highly watchable and extremely likeable idiot-clown providing a truly unusual experience. He is both hugely idiotic and just simply huge. The show begins with him calling from behind the curtain for a lost friend called Happiness, and when he emerges in his Uncle Fester/jester outfit there is a collective intake of breath […]