The staging is simple: four straight-backed chairs, a backdrop for projections and, overhead, two rows of clothing hung on lines (theatre is a place for costumes and dressing-up, but also, we are reminded, the theatre we are here to pay our respects...
Immersive art shows have a chequered reputation, but Lightroom’s collaboration with David Hockney is something of a triumph. Perhaps it is that Hockney often works in light (quite literally, given his now famous iPad “paintings”). Or perhaps it is...
Seven-(almost eight)-year-olds, Mickey and Eddie form an immediate bond when they meet by chance in a Liverpool park in the 1960s. Unruly, foul-mouthed Mickey thrills and appalls Eddie (‘Edward’ to his parents) with his unfettered language and...
Whenever “the great and the good” turn out in numbers for a show, it is more likely they are anxious to be seen rather than to see. Laurie Anderson’s remarkable ARK: United States V provides a notable exception to this rule. Familiar faces are much...
I come away from Opera North’s revived production of Benjamin Britten’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream still trying to work out whether or not I enjoyed it. Those things that ON, almost without exception, do well, were a triumph. The...
When Punch magazine first printed its cartoon about a curate’s egg, the joke was very clear. Fearful of offending his superior, the bishop, the curate describes the egg he has been served for breakfast as having “excellent” parts. For reasons that...
I do not know and am not qualified to say if Huang Ruo’s newly commissioned piece, “City of Floating Sounds,” is a great work of music. What I do know and can say, with gratitude and certainty, is that the event the ‘composer and conceptual artist’...
Resist the urge to bolt the door and close the curtains when you spot the words “Jehovah’s Witness” in the promotional blurb for Brook Tate’s confessional show, “Birthmarked.” If anything, think of this as your opportunity to turn the tables; to...
Befuddled, bamboozled and more than a little punch-drunk. In this emotional/intellectual state, I stumble from the Quays Theatre at the Lowry after 12 rounds – or was it 80 minutes? – with the Igor x Moreno contemporary dance piece...
‘The Accountants’ is a cross-cultural collaboration between choreographers and video designers at Factory International. And there is so much energy and devotion to the project in evidence that the audience can’t help but want to love it...