We take the world with us when we go to the theatre. Our private swirls of panic and joy. Whatever public pains have been doled out. I came to Shoreditch Town Hall to see YOUARENOWHERE just a short while after hearing that MP Jo Cox had been murdered. Andrew Schneider’s 2015 New York hit is an immensely artful piece, but following Orlando, following everything, and carrying my own bag of private … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2016
Propwatch: the sock in Phaedra(s)
British audiences are no longer scared of European theatre. It has taken us years – decades – to feel relaxed about non-representational stagings, actors stripped of plummy tones, the fourth wall not only breached but blown to smithereens. Ivo van Hove and Thomas Ostermeier are our adorable foreign uncles who visit every couple of years with cool gifts. Katie Mitchell, Simon Stephens and Lyndsey … [Read more...]
Inside out
Crystal Pite’s Betroffenheit. I’m doing it again. Smacking myself on the side of the head because it’s too panicked and busy in there, a snarl of thoughts that go nowhere and that I’m desperate to have stop. I’m stuck stuck stuck, but thwacking doesn’t help. We’re each of stuck in our heads, listening to the jabber of our mind. Musing, browsing, processing thought. Buffeted by feeling, crowded … [Read more...]