What is most striking about James Thiérrée’s fifth production for Compagnie du Hanneton is not the sheer scale of the ever-transforming, decaying set, nor the exquisitely-controlled and detailed physical scores of the performers, but the fleeting and shifting surrealist world that Thiérrée has crafted in this 90-minute spectacle. Almost steampunk in feel, this is a […]

Dancin’ Oxford 2014, a yearly festival featuring premieres from both emerging and well established artists over an eleven day period, launched in Oxford City Centre on 1 March. For the fourth year running, Moving with the Times, commissioned and produced by Pegasus Theatre, and Dancin’ Oxford featured local choreographers whose new, short works were shown […]

The story starts off with a casually-delivered bombshell. A simply-dressed young woman takes centre stage, reading from a sheaf of papers on a downstage table. ‘That’s final – it is inoperable,’ she reads. Cancer then, and terminal, in the opening lines, or rather bars, for this story is to be sung, supported by a chamber […]

Do you still suck your thumb? Is Peter ‘The Cat’ Bonetti still in goal? Are you in a west end musical yet? These, I like to think, are the questions my younger self would ask my older self. Hindsight can be so useful. The Gob Squad company of young actors went through this process in […]

In 2012, Jon Haynes & David Woods decided that their next show would be a family drama. They quickly discovered that mental illness played a central role in both their lives, and set about investigating how their experiences could become theatre. A trip to Finland was pivotal to the making of the show. At a […]