Across the Barbican’s vast stage – right across, east to west – is a wall. It could be anywhere: Berlin pre-1989; the West Bank, anytime over the past 30 years. It could be now: Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary; the entrance to the  Channel Tunnel at Calais. It’s perhaps 3 or 4 metres high, a mottled rusty-grey […]

Classic clowning is joyfully brought to life at the Unicorn Theatre for Gary Owen’s Jeramee, Hartleby and Ooglemore. It’s interesting to see the piece in the same week that I finally caught Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott, his celebrated play that is enjoying a run at the National Theatre’s Temporary Space. Whilst Iphigenia is a dense, […]

 Tea for two? Lisa Wolfe finds the place where food meets art, at the Hunt & Darton Café  ‘Regret nothing’ is a great life motto for some, but I still curse myself for leaving Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton’s SICK! Festival Café minutes too early one lunchtime in March 2014. My sister-in-law had just courageously […]

For fans of film noir, Hardboiled is a delight. Inspired by classic thrillers like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep and, later, Chinatown, Hardboiled translates the essence of this brooding genre into the language of theatre with great style and inventiveness. The story follows a young but determined private investigator, Sam Shadow, as he takes […]

A number of complex creations of metal, wood, wire, and paper litter the dimly lit stage; an electric guitar is strummed by a plectrum wired to a glass bowl swinging on the end of a long string; various tables, a fish tank, screens, pulleys, trolleys, and ropes lie inert, like the abandoned, half-realised experiments of […]