I’m late to the party with this show, much feted at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and have just a few comments to add to Dorothy Max Prior’s summary hot from the festival. David Leddy is known for his creative pushing of site specific performance and it’s very interesting to encounter his work in a studio, […]

Demon, daemon, fiend. Christianity traditionally places the demon, a spiritual entity that can be conjured or controlled, in binary opposition to the good and the godly. Many ancient mythologies see gods and demons as one and the same. In Bali, a black-and-white chequered flag is at every household or temple door, reminding the guest that […]

Beowulf is the first full length production by Barely Human Puppets, who have made a name for themselves in Brighton for their quirky short shows and beautifully crafted puppets by artistic director Daisy Jordan. It’s an ambitious text to tackle, embedded in Anglo-Saxon artistic convention, not to mention written in an Old English language that […]

Colm Tóibín’s novella, on which this show is based, was published just a few months before this production debuted on Broadway. The show drew protests, angered thousands and closed early. Indeed it’s hard to imagine a performance depicting Mary the Mother of God as a cynic of Jesus’s power ever flourishing in the commercial land […]

Okuni opens with a voice over explaining in clear level tones that Kabuki is the theatre and dance of the avant-garde or bizarre. Then we see a stern male figure in robes, flanked by two younger women: his face is chiselled and still, their faces are mobile and smiling. The stage is set for a […]