Having seen some of Sleeping Trees’ previous shows, my expectations were high for this comedy-theatre performance, presented in a rotating bill parodying either the ‘mafia’ or ‘western’ genre. The inclusion of a live three-piece, The Physics House Band, on stage made this production particularly distinctive. First, spatially, as the set-up immediately becomes more gig-like than […]

Headlock Theatre, a young company founded by Sheffield University students in 2010, have created an energetic and very physical devised adaptation of the classic fairytale Bluebeard. Their narrative centres on Blue, a young woman and distant relation of the titular Bluebeard, a man renowned for killing his young brides when they dissatisfy him. Soon Blue […]

There is a drummer at his drum kit, dim light, smoke, and three performers dressed in grubby wartime hotel worker uniforms. There’s a large square of canvas on a rolling scaffold at the back and an air of suspense, intent, and unease. Stefan Zweig’s novel The Royal Game tells a tale of love, loss, solitary […]

The arriving audience is greeted by electronic music being created live by a musician, a plain white set of walls, windows, domestic furniture, and a young woman sitting wide-eyed on a small bed staring off into the middle distance. As soon as the performance begins a man appears, very clearly in grief for a lost […]

Based upon true events that happened a few years ago and were briefly in the papers in Scotland and England, this performance derives from interviews with the daughter and the two parents who were at the centre of the story. Most of the events recounted here take place in Glasgow and focus on the romance […]