by Romy Foster
This December, audiences of Battersea Arts Centre are transported to the vibrant forest of Cherwood where big bad wolves, beloved outlaws and worldwide superstars run amock. This inventive mash-up of the famous childhood classics Little Red Riding Hood and Robin Hood make an unlikely but hilarious twist as we follow the townspeople being terrorised by the sheriff of Nottingham in his wicked attempt to build a car park over the village.
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by Romy Foster
It’s a wonder that Sleeping Trees have managed to put on a show for kids. Their adult productions are cheeky, provocative, silly and inappropriate but in Sleeping Beauty and the Beast they bring the fun for kids and adults alike in this partially improvised twist on two children’s classics.
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by Laura Kressly
As her latest show further proves, Lucy McCormick is a queen of pop culture critique. Embodying her alter ego Lucy Muck, she debuts as a pop star but not one with the spit and polish of a music video. Instead she embraces an aesthetics of failure in both her design and dramaturgy. DIY costumes, gunge and water combine with her character’s emotional vulnerability to interrogate the high shine of celebrity and expectations of a music icon in this absurd and often poignant gig.
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By Euan Vincent
Director Jack McNamara promised very different performances for each part of Thibault Delferiere’s Spirit trilogy. Attending Lion, we begin to see what he means. Audience filter in to find a desolate Delferiere sitting in a cage. Food is once again dangling from the ceiling, but whereas in the first it was an innocent apple, here a large chunk of meat, tantalises Delferiere from above.
by Euan Vincent
Accompanying the first performance of Thibault Delferiere’s trilogy (directed by Jack McNamara), is a side of A4 paper containing three quotes from Nietzsche. They depict a journey through three transmutations: the spirit as camel, the spirit as lion, the spirit as baby. Like the camel, the spirit desires to burden itself and takes on heavy loads. Once laden it transforms into a lion – where it’s power and destructiveness can create the space for the new. And in that space, the baby emerges – wide-eyed and forgetful, the spirit can now create unencumbered. That is the journey that the trilogy promises to traverse.
by Laura Kressly
Welcome to the present, where we’re listening to a gig-theatre/TED Talk about the future. Specifically, Little Bulb have drawn on research from the finest minds in science, mathematics and philosophy to look at the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the impact it could have on us. Will it lead to utopia for the human race, or will we be driven to extinction?
by Laura Kressly
After graduating from City College of New York in the 1960s, Assata Shakur joined the Black Panther Party. In 2014, after enrolling at Washington University in St Louis weeks after unarmed teenager Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in the same city, Ambrosia starts going to Black Lives Matter rallies. Moved by injustice decades apart, the two Black women are subjected to systemic racism and violence in their pursuit of freedom. Apphia Campbell performs them both, embodying their passion and anger through storytelling and song, in this lightning-strike of a show.
by Laura Kressly
Time. Generally, I never seem to have enough of it. Occasionally – rarely – I have too much to wade through before reaching something I’m eagerly anticipating – a holiday, the weekend, time with a friend I haven’t seen in awhile, or a desperately needed lie-in. Yet for Norman and Vivian, the elderly couple in Ridiculusmus’ new show about ageing, time is a languid, sluggish force. Every weighty moment is stretched to its limits, threatens to stall, and is marked by discomfort, weakness and struggle.
by Laura Kressly
As the world feels more and more like a dystopian nightmare that could explode at any moment from greed and relentless late capitalism, it’s unsurprising that young people are worried about their future. Sounds Like Chaos are a soothing balm for them, though. The associate company at the Albany supports referred and self-referred 12-21 year olds with training, employment opportunities and opportunities to make theatre, treating them with respect and valuing their ideas. Their latest ensemble work is set in the near future, using music, projections and ritual to critique online culture.
by Gregory Forest
Frankenstein is a tour de force.
A choral, beatboxing, rap-infused version of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, Battersea Arts Centre’s ‘live concept album’ manages to entertain and analyse our world in equal measure.
The Play's The Thing UK 