Brighton
Thomas H. Green
Problem is Brighton is down in the Festival programme as an “alt-rock/pop pantomime”, with actors involved and the inference it’s some sort of musical featuring “instruments specially created by David Shrigley for the performance”. This turns out to be seriously over-selling it. In fact, Problem in Brighton is a rock band put together to play an hour of songs created in league with the maverick artist and Festival Guest Director. Putting any expectations aside, it’s a patchy show.The band – four men, two women – initially arrive on stage one by one, in regulation black cowboy shirts with Read more ...
Katie Colombus
They say that behind every successful man is a strong woman. The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is as much – if not more so – the championing of the unsung hero in this story of the famous early modernist artist, Marc Chagall. His wife, Bella – early muse, sharer of world views and buckets of milk and mother of their daughter Ida, is paid tribute to, for her devotion and dedication to her husband's art.The birth of surrealism is played out on a small stage, made up of geometric shapes from the hyper-colour backdrop, wooden structure set and the angles at which the actors lean, holding onto ropes to Read more ...
Katie Colombus
There is a sense of loyalty from the Brighton audience awaiting Hofesh Shechter’s new work. They have seen his company here in 2009, for the Brighton Festival commission of The Art of Not Looking Back, and the infamous Political Mother premiered here for the Festival in 2010.There was a feeling that people were waiting to be wowed – and they were not disappointed. The piece opens with a person being shot against a dark wall, which then divides into two. Immediately my thoughts are drawn to the divisive Israel/Palestinian conflict, a theme which the Israeli-born choreographer has dabbled in Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Yorkshire theatre company IOU have a tool in their armoury that most of their peers do not. It’s an open-topped bus with tiered seating, as pictured above, built in Halifax and the only one of its type, replete with headphone sets for every seat. It is at the heart of Rear View, their show which takes to the streets of Brighton and puts the participant right at the blurred connecting point between art and reality. It’s a unique experience.Rear View starts at a barge venue in Brighton Marina. The Marina is a gaudy, ugly place of clunky, mismatched modern buildings and tacky, American-style Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When an acquaintance heard my first review of the Brighton Festival was a circus event they snorted, “Oh dear.” It’s strange; for a couple of decades there’s been a default setting among broad swathes of otherwise artistically-inclined Boho sorts: that circus is embarrassing and naff. Think of all those sniping jokes about jugglers at festivals and circus skills workshops. It’s all rather bizarre, especially pondered in the post-performance glow of Wales-based collective NoFit State Circus’s fantastic new show Lexicon. It’s hard to see what could possibly be naff about the human body doing Read more ...
Neil Bartlett
Director, playwright and novelist Neil Bartlett has been making theatre and causing trouble since the 1980s. He made his name with a series of controversial stark naked performances staged in clubs and warehouses, then went on to become the groundbreaking Artistic Director of the Lyric Hammersmith in London in 1994. Since leaving the Lyric in 2005, he’s worked with collaborators as different as the National, Duckie, the Bristol Old Vic, Artangel, and the Edinburgh International Festival. Four of his previous Brighton Festival shows have been at the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This weekend sees the Brighton Festival 2018 kick off. Anyone visiting the city on Saturday 5 May would find this hard to miss as the famous Children’s Parade makes its way around the streets, a joyous dash of colour and creativity. This year’s theme, in honour of Brighton Festival guest director David Shrigley, is “Paintings”. Thus every school in the area has been assigned a famous painting on which to base their parade presentation. The results are guaranteed to be an eye-boggling public showcase.After the success last year in taking the Festival to outlying areas of Brighton, Your Place Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
David Shrigley (b. 1968) is an artist whose work has become broadly popular via a wide range of formats. At first glance, his stark pen-on-paper drawings seem akin to humorous newspaper cartoons – and, indeed, he’s contributed to The Guardian for years – but there's another layer to his work, something odder, slyer, psychologically attuned to the relationship between the subconscious and the ruthlessness of the human condition.As well as a long series of books and multiple exhibitions all around the world, including forthcoming ones this year in Shanghai, Stockholm and on the Greek island of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Seth Kriebel, 45, is a performer, much of whose work involves audience participation. He is bringing the show A House Repeated to the Brighton Festival 2018 between 6th and 11th May. Of American origin, born and raised near Philadelphia, Kriebel moved to the UK in 2001 and, over the last few years, has achieved increasing profile and success with shows such as Beowulf, The Unbuilt Room and We This Way.THOMAS H GREEN: Was your background in the States arts-orientated?SETH KRIEBEL: This is always difficult to try and contextualise for a British audience. Where I’m from is roughly equivalent to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The third album from Thomas White under his Fiction Aisle moniker is a match for its delicious, under-heard predecessors. White remains best known for his output with The Electric Soft Parade and Brakes but the prolific Fiction Aisle (three albums since 2016) deserve to gain wider purchase. This time round the mood is more tentatively upbeat than previously, and White’s Pink Floyd-ish tendencies are on the back burner, but, at its core, cosmic easy listening is still the game.The Fiction Aisle aspire to John Barry’s cinematic orchestrated scope, but tinted with hints of Morrissey’s vocal tics Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
In 1725 a collection of some 50 songs was published by one William Thomson. You might not know his name, or even the names of the songs, but given the first bar of most I’m betting you could hum them from beginning to end. The work? Orpheus Caledonius – the first published collection of Scottish folk melodies and lyrics.This year’s Brighton Early Music Festival takes “Roots” as its theme, and this opening night concert looked back beyond baroque to the traditional tunes that lurk, just out of sight, behind so many of its great works, from Corelli to Purcell. This performance by period band L’ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ten years ago Brighton band 12 Stone Toddler burst onto the scene with two off-the-wall albums of madly inventive pop-rock. They then vamoosed back out of existence. Now they’re back, preparing a third album for the Freshly Squeezed label, and playing a packed home town gig. The second song they do is a new one, “Piranha” and it shows they’re no nearer normal. It’s a jagged, shouty thing with a catchy chorus about there being piranhas in the water, half football chant, half King Crimson. It’s edgy, deliberately bizarre, and oddly approachable, fun by way of musical obtuseness, just like the Read more ...