mime
Dimanche, Edinburgh International Festival 2023 review - troubling and bewilderingMonday, 21 August 2023A toy car – in fact, a mobile home with comically enormous antenna on top – shudders over arms and shoulders as if they were mountain ranges. A colossal polar bear comforts its curious cub. A lifesize puppet grandmother is chased up and down stairs... Read more... |
Room, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - decadent, extravagant, and somewhat mystifyingTuesday, 16 August 2022"I feel I owe you an explanation." That much James Thierrée concedes partway through his sprawling, freewheeling, dream-like, hallucinatory Room in Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre. By which stage, most of the audience was probably in agreement. It’s a... Read more... |
The Wedding, Gecko Theatre, Barbican review - eccentric, ebullient exploration of our contract with societyFriday, 10 June 2022You never forget your first Gecko production. I experienced mine almost 20 years ago at the Battersea Arts Centre, when the company performed Tailors’ Dummies, its ingenious surreal show about obsession. This had all the hallmarks that would make... Read more... |
Project Dictator, New Diorama Theatre review - anarchic satireThursday, 07 April 2022When Rhum + Clay conceived this show, the idea of a comic becoming a political leader might have prompted thoughts of Boris Johnson's carefully cultivated buffoonery on "Have I Got News For You" and elsewhere. Since then, a certain Volodymyr... Read more... |
Corin Sworn: Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Whitechapel GalleryFriday, 22 May 2015Glasgow-based Corin Sworn is the fifth winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Every two years a British artist is chosen on the basis of a proposal, rather than existing work. The fashion house then supports the project with funding, a bespoke... Read more... |
The Tempest Replica, Kidd Pivot, Birmingham HippodromeMonday, 05 May 2014If, standing on a station platform, your arms want to make shapes in the air; if, walking home, you are mesmerised by the curved toes of your shoes against the pavement; if, in the kitchen, a stray salad leaf on the floor transforms before your eyes... Read more... |
Harlekin, Derevo, Linbury Studio TheatreThursday, 17 January 2013I've always keenly anticipated Derevo. A rare sight in London, they are the must-catch company in a singular branch of mime theatre - some would call it clowning, from an oblique, dark place of visions, fears and childlike imaginings. They are a... Read more... |
Julien Cottereau: Imagine Toi, Purcell RoomMonday, 17 December 2012There’s something off stage, something loud and threatening, pulsating in dark red, at the beginning of Julien Cottereau’s solo mime piece Imagine Toi. This is a show of fears and sweetnesses, and there’s no holding back on the former as we progress... Read more... |
Slava's Snowshow, Royal Festival HallThursday, 29 December 2011Slava’s Snowshow is a Christmas package you don’t want to have unwrapped for you by someone else's description - it’s a fantastical, childlike, theatrical experience that for many is among the most profoundly delighting of their theatre-going... Read more... |
Doctor Brown, Soho TheatreTuesday, 27 September 2011Clowning, despite its association with great funnymen such as Joseph Grimaldi and Charlie Chaplin, has always had a dark underside of melancholy or even menace. More latterly it has been thought of in terms of “low” arts such as circus and street... Read more... |
Du Goudron et Des Plumes, Barbican/ Flogging a Dead Horse, Roundhouse StudioFriday, 28 January 2011Five people stand in the dark. A bleak gantry descends with a rumble onto their heads. They scuttle under it and flatten themselves to escape a crushing, but then they get up and start building. The platform is stripped of planks, rebuilt at crazy... Read more... |
Les Antliaclastes, Institute of Contemporary Arts/ A Guide to PuppetryMonday, 24 January 2011The puppets appearing in LIMF this year are by no means all child-friendly - after the mild kiddy-horror of Teatro Corsario and their hand-manipulated Bunraku creatures, the return of the much more disturbing imagination of Patrick Sims, founder and... Read more... |
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