Alain Platel’s Nicht Schlafen is a major work that maddens some and delights many. I found it to be exciting and packed with stimulating aesthetic, intellectual and artistic choices.
A new glass museum opened last autumn in the North of France and it is a jewel. It is centred in Sars-Poteries in the Avesnois. This is a rural setting which once housed glass-making factories from 1800-1937.
Sergio Blanco’s hugely ambitious text is a clever conceit. It is the story of T. a middle-aged man driven to investigate the theme of Oedipus for his new play. He does this by interviewing a young prisoner who is serving several life sentences for murdering his father.
This is an ambitious reinterpretation of Swan Lake from a modern Irish perspective. Embedded in this ‘ballet’ is an acute critique of the Irish clergy.
Akram Khan’s new vision of Giselle for English National Ballet is a brave political reinterpretation of the nineteenth century classic, set to Vincenzo Lamagana’s modern score. Classical ballet purists may find that both deviate too far from the original but there is much to admire.
Sam Shepard’s 1983 play has now become a theatre classic because of the hugely challenging roles it gives to four actors. The plot centres around the love-hate relationship between an incestuous half-brother and sister.
Sharon Eyal danced with Israel’s famous Bathsheva Dance company and was House Choreographer from 2005-2012. It is her genius that is at the source of this compulsive modern ballet which publicises itself as being ‘about love out of sync’.
This was my first trip to Emily Dobbs’ pop-up venue Found 111 on the Charing Cross Road. It is impressive. I had missed this play at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014 and was pleased at the chance of catching it. I was not disappointed.
This is a gripping novel by a hugely gifted writer and one that is rich on atmosphere and character study. The originality of the work is its investigative story line which focuses on the loving relationship between a twin and her disabled sister.
Leoš Janácek’s absurdist opera, first performed in Brno on 6 November 1924, is a marvellous expression of Modernism. We get Freud, Darwin, Magritte and Jarry as oblique cultural references but most of all we get a Czech, or rather Moravian, sensibility which is both cartoonish and psychologically astute.
This was the UK premiere for the Compagnie Marie Chouinard from Quebec. She started with Soft virtuosity, still humid, on the edge – a title that means nothing in English but perhaps has more resonance in French. Happily the work was far more exciting than the title.
Mithkal Alzghair Displacement, Sadlers Wells. Review by Julia Pascal.
Mithkal Alzghair’s 55 minute performance, Displacement, is both a simple and highly complex dance work. Alzghair is a Syrian artist who has studied in Damascus and in Montpellier and the work reflects traditional Arab and modern European cultural influences.