REVIEWS Archives - Page 235 of 551

13Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Ruins – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Ruinsis a multi-media dance performance involving three humans, locked within a video cube, who represent the last of the human race, kept alive by machines. Created by Megahertz, a visual theatre company and relying on wordless, highly expressive, beautiful movement from Philip Alexander McDonald, Rita Hu and Suzi Cunningham, the performance is set against an extraordinary soundscape by Cucina Povera and Jamie Grier. The fourth star of this show is the video cube itself, which is extraordinary. Projections from three different directions onto a gauzelike material on a thin metal frame creates the impression of semi-solid walls surrounding the figures and hologram-like images seem to float unhindered within the cube. The effect is mesmeri...

[Un]lovable A Scratch Night Performance – St Augustines, George IV Bridge

13Feb

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

[Un]lovable A Scratch Night Performance – St Augustines, George IV Bridge

[Un]lovable A Scratch Night Performance by Not so Nice! Theatre company is one hundred percent loveable. Each of the five scratch theatre pieces were deftly crafted: the writing was thoughtful and witty; set design simple yet apt; costumes spot on; lighting simple and the quality of acting perfectly matched the rigor of the black box. Performed in the basement of St Augustine’s, this young company is brimming with talent and has a keen following. Not subject to the delays and restrictions of bidding for a grant, Not So Nice! are free to play and create collaboratively and with vigor. Each of the five vignettes on love and the rejection of love were equally as entertaining and thought-provoking. The evening began with It’s Always a Sad Song by Will Evans. In this exploration of wants ...

13Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Ragnarok – Traverse Theatre

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Ragnarokis a hugely entertaining, massively ambitious and highly technical show, an international co-production between Edinburgh based, Tortoise In A Nutshell, and Nordland Visual Theatre of Norway. The show which has over 1100 cue lines, to give an idea of its scale, combines hundreds of mini stick-like figures living within a mini set and captured in real time with the use of the latest technology in micro cinema, combined with live music and live video projection to create an alternative universe in front of our eyes. Here the great wolf rattles its chains, and the world snake sleeps lightly, wrapping its tail covetously around the globe. If the great wolf escapes, it will eat the sun and the moon and infect the world with pestilence and di...

Shorts 3: Beyond Words – Summerhall, Edinburgh

13Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Shorts 3: Beyond Words – Summerhall, Edinburgh

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Shorts 3: Beyond Words is a great opportunity to see a wide and varied collection of animated short films from around the world, and to have your mind and imagination sparked by them. The third and final part of the animated film programme for this year. In the poignant and thought-provoking Sisters, by Andrea Szelesova, a young girl sullenly pulls a heavy load across a barren wasteland to the slumped body of a red skinned giant. She climbs up and grudgingly feeds bread and water to the giant, which rumbles and grows. Around the giant new flowers begin to sprout, their heavy heads tinkling in the breeze, the sound of tiny bells. The young girl resentfully continues to feed the giant, with the same results every day. One day she wakes up and ...

13Feb

By Anisha PucadyilNo Comments

London

Self Raising – Soho Theatre

Self Raising is a moving account of the autobiographical story of Jenny Sealey, Funny, poignant, witty and intelligent. Using the memoir form she paints the significant moments, adults and photographs that have left an inedible mark on her life. The joy of being in a theatre with so many diverse patrons itself is Self Raising’s biggest achievement. Disabled members of our society do not have many venues that are accessible, productions that are sensitive or innovatively incorporate signing and live captions in their performance. When Jenny Sealey and her interpreter walk on stage encouraging the audience to continue talking, but no one does because she has our undivided attention. Jenny’s unfettered candour warmth and generosity make our curiosity and investment in her story grow with t...

10Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Tess – Traverse Theatre

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Tess is an ambitious retelling of Hardy’s famous tale, Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, through a feminist lens by the acclaimed UK circus theatre company Ockham Razor. The original tale was set in Victorian England, but there are plenty of moral and ethical lessons which translate very easily into today’s Britain. The story of a naïve young girl, forced into low paid work by poverty, and then abused and violated by a rich arrogant seducer, seems all too familiar. The fact that the abuse becomes her almost unbearable cross to bear and yet means little or nothing to him also speaks volumes. In this production there are two Tesses, actor Macadie Amoroso who speaks the tale and Lila Naruse who physically enacts it. They are joined on stage by five...

10Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Pickled Republic – Traverse Theatre

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Pickled Republic is advertised as an existential dip into the pickle jar of life from Glasgow-based creator/performer Rudy Cantir. Originally from Moldova, where apparently every food is pickled, this one-woman show sees Rudy morph into various pickled vegetables to highlight the universal themes of abandonment, being unfulfilled and unwanted, the fundamental need to be loved, or in the case of the pickled tomato, just eaten would be nice! It sounds zany and it is! Sound designer John Keilty creates an atmospheric, gastric gurgling soundscape and I assume also writes the witty songs which pepper this dish. But the real driving force behind this show are the consumes, which are fabulously conceived by Fergus Dunnet, and which takes t...

The Hills of California – Harold Pinter Theatre

10Feb

By Alice RoseNo Comments

London

The Hills of California – Harold Pinter Theatre

Jez Butterworth graces us with another play with depth and wonder, beautifully directed by Sam Mendes. The play currently resides at Harold Pinter Theatre in which the world is clear and grand as we walk into a house with a huge staircase, old wooden design and a little bar filled with very old alcohol. The staircase seems like it goes up and on forever, set in a hotel in the 80s which once in the past housed very many visitors but always 4 young girls and their mother. We switch from present day to past, now the mother is dying, the girls all await their eldest sister Joan to come say goodbye. In the past we watch the mother run the home, military style as the girls practice their singing and dancing with the biggest dreams of making it to the London Palladium. Their mother also, pushing ...

Songs for a New World – Upstairs at the Gatehouse

10Feb

By Samantha CollettNo Comments

London

Songs for a New World – Upstairs at the Gatehouse

When you watch a musical production, it usually follows a known formula with a beginning, middle and an end. Not so with ‘Songs for a New World’ for this is what’s known as a song-cycle. That means rather than having one fully formed narrative, the show is an anthology; a collection of short stories that hang together with common themes. For me, I think the best way to describe this production is as an immersive musical show. You honestly feel as though you’ve stepped into the making of a musical and are part and parcel of the actual show, such is the intimacy of this performance. The venue aids this feeling enormously, and to be seated just inches away from the action is a real thrill. Unlike most shows, the band are not hidden away, they are clearly visible, on display and are inte...

Madagascar The Musical – Opera House, Manchester

9Feb

By Bo WarnerNo Comments

North West

Madagascar The Musical – Opera House, Manchester

‘Madagascar the Musical’, an all-singing-and-dancing adaptation of the hit 2005 film, is currently making its way around the UK & Ireland to the delight of children everywhere. 20 years after its release, it’s fantastic to see that this film is still being enjoyed by today’s generation enough that the draw of Madagascar can fill the Manchester Opera House. This is a colourful, high-energy and fast-paced production that doesn’t pause to catch breath. It was clear to me that the children in the audience were thoroughly enjoying the ride, and were engaged from start to finish, singing along and giggling as they did. Impressive set pieces by Tom Rogers were plentiful and rolled out often - I was impressed by how high budget and slick everything felt. I have to say, I didn’t care for ...