I Could’ve Been Better takes us into the world of the wonderfully unique James, a thirty-something social oddity. Gangly in limb, adorned with a nondescript blue shirt tucked deep into pleated plain trousers that hover at his ankles above verruca socks, he stands with his back toward the incoming audience. As we take out seats, rarely […]

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 […]