LIFT Blog: Theatre & the Arab World

Written for the LIFT Blog Reading an interview with the New York based actor Danny Hoch on the tube home last night, I came across the foll...

LIFT Blog: On Gaming as Theatre

Written for the LIFT Blog Can computer games be art? It’s a debate that has been rumbling on for years: delve the depths of the internet and...

LIFT Blog: The Climate for Theatre

Written for the LIFT blog I’ll start with the unspeakable. My feelings on theatre about climate change are not dissimilar to Charles Spencer...

LIFT Blog: The Epic & The Intimate

Written for the LIFT Blog At Thursday’s LIFT talk, inclusively titled The Epic and The Intimate , there seemed to be polite consensus that t...

LIFT Blog: We The People

Written for the LIFT Blog The People, Johanna told us in the midst of Thursday night’s revolution, are called Tim. They’ve come from Elephan...

LIFT Blog: Digital Democracy

Written for the LIFT Blog Given the steadfast devotion to its development, you could be forgiven for imagining technology to have intrinsic ...

LIFT Blog: On Festivals

Written for the LIFT blog All festivals, whether overtly religious or entirely secular, are somehow holy. Holiness is the mark of otherness ...

Review: What Every Woman Knows, Finborough Theatre

Written for Time Out Written at the height of the suffragette movement, What Every Woman Knows is not, as its male protagonist believes, &#...

Review: Susurrus, Holland Park as part of Gate Outdoors

Written for Culture Wars Though it may ‘quickly dream away the time,’ David Leddy’s Susurrus works out as little more than a stroll with e...

Review: Domini Public, National Theatre (with the Gate Theatre)

Written for Culture Wars From the census arises a picture of a nation torn apart. In the square outside the National Theatre, a civil war er...

Review: A Game of You, One on One Festival at BAC

If Internal presents you with a distorting fairground mirror, A Game of You walks you inside an infinity triangle. Everywhere you look the...

Review: Aspects of Love, Menier Chocolate Factory

Written for Time Out Returning to Aspects of Love after his original West End staging was deemed overblown in 1989, Trevor Nunn opts for si...

Response: I Vow to Thee, One on One Festival at BAC

One of the best features of work that treats its audience on an individual basis is the manner in which it can have a lingering and longstan...

Response: Soldiers' Song, One on One Festival at BAC

Step into the inauspicious crate in the foyer of the Battersea Arts Centre and you’re confronted with a quiet dilemma: to sing or to listen....

Response: Rendez-Vous, One on One Festival at BAC

Villanella and Hanneke Paauwe have forgotten that a gentle tug at our heartstrings is far more effective than an attempt to induce a full-on...

Response: A Little Bit of Something Beautfiul, One on One Festival at BAC

Barnaby Stone proves that you don’t need to prod, poke and stroke to physically engage an audience member in this exquisitely crafted littl...

Response: Wonder Nurse, One on One Festival at BAC

What strikes me most about Wonder Nurse is that it is, in a surprisingly traditional manner, a comedy. Even though we are involved in a sit...

Review: One on One Festival, Battersea Arts Centre

Written for Time Out Short of shelling out a fortune to spend a fortnight exploring every nook and cranny of the Battersea Arts Centre, ther...

Response: Just For A Moment, One on One Festival at BAC

Three Blind Mice are a company born out of the Battersea Arts Centre’s YPT (Young Persons’ Theatre) scheme. Just For a Moment, therefore, ou...

Response: Electric, One on One Festival at BAC

Professor Ray Lee has the air of a GP carrying out some form of check up. He peers over his rectangular glasses and looks directly, deeply i...

Response: Observation Deck, One on One Festival at BAC

Observation Deck is not so much ‘one on one’ as ‘on one’s own’. In a back room of the BAC, there is a contraption conceived and designed by...

Response: Folk in a Box, One on One Festival at BAC

Perhaps more than any other piece at the festival, Folk in a Box is a performance in the traditional sense. It involves watching a performa...

Review: The Smile Off Your Face, One on One Festival at BAC

Another day, another wheelchair rickshaw ride... Ontroerend Goed’s The Smile Off Your Face seems the most appropriate place to start my jou...

Review: Not By Bread Alone, Arts Depot

Written for Culture Wars Sometimes the simple fact of a show’s occurrence is all it takes. Consider the work of the Free Theatre of Belarus,...

Review: Assassins, Union Theatre

Written for Time Out Stephen Sondheim's firebrand musical might lose the irony behind its Broadway tipsiness when scaled down but, in Mi...

Review: You, Me, Bum Bum Train, LEB Building

Written for Culture Wars You never forget your first time. Almost two years ago, in the heart of Shoreditch, I stepped through the glitzy cu...

Review: Best Before, ICA

Written for Culture Wars There are so many sides to Rimini Protokoll’s live-videogame that it inevitably raises a great number of thoughts. ...

Review: Life Streaming, National Theatre Square

Written for Culture Wars Parked on the South Bank there’s a portal to Sri Lanka: Dries Verhoeven has set up a temporary internet cafe to lin...