A sprawling tree like a cradle, a serene haven for suburban Adam and Eve: Catherine and William Blake. When a visitor intrudes, Paradise is Lost in more than one way. The tree leaves are dead and the crowd outside of this South London Eden is roaring. Revolutions, counter revolutions – killing in the name of […]
Category archives: Reviews
RIFT’s Macbeth at Balfron Tower
Welcome to Borduria, the country inhabiting all fictional characters. Goldilocks lives in Northern Borduria but the portal in a basement of the brutalist Balfron tower in East London leads straight to the grim South where the unscrupulous and scheming Macbeths reside. Alongside these fictional characters live the Bordurian citizens who show the spatially shifted visitors […]
The Crucible at the Old Vic
Mysterious and shrouded in fog, a group of women perform a solemn death dance around empty chairs – an eerie foresight into the fate of a community that will be decimated by a relentless witch hunt. As an opening it’s tender, quiet and simple, but also quite unlike the high-octane shout matches that dominate the […]
Cheek by Jowl’s Ubu Roi
This play, it farts, it licks, it spits. Cheek by Jowl’s hugely successful Ubu Roi returns to the Barbican in all its decadence-smashing scrutiny. An adolescent boy with a camera pans over dead meat and the extreme close-up is projected on the crème walls of a pristine dining room. A middle-aged couple swoops on stage […]