Review: As The Flames Rose, We Danced to the Sirens, the Sirens, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars She swoons. On the video tape, she swoons. In black and white, she swoons. Her eyelids slide shut and she rocks bac...

Review: Enquirer, Barbican Centre off-site

Written for Culture Wars “ In my experience the newspapers are a combination of what people never meant, combined with what people never sai...

Review: Cymbeline, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars Most of Shakespeare’s plots fall effortlessly into place. His loose ends tie themselves together almost of their ac...

Review: Einstein on the Beach, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars Have you ever felt – and I mean, really felt – the four laws of thermodynamics? What about Snell’s Law of Refractio...

Review: The Master and Margarita, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars Mikhail Bulgakov’s great satiric novel cries out for theatrical adaptation. Not only does it use the theatre as an ...

Review: The Devil and Mr Punch, Barbican Centre

A Punch so strong it might well have been spiked, Julian Crouch’s meta-puppet show is the best Improbable piece I’ve seen to date. For anyon...

Review: L'immediat, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars A woman gets home. She puts her keys into the front door. It crumples into a heap of wooden slats. Unphased, she go...

Review: Hamlet, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars In Britain, we tend to take our Shakespeare as it comes. Directors that dare draw out – or worse, impose – particul...

Review: Festen, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars The tipple of choice at Helge Klingenfeldt-Hansen’s 60th birthday party is a glass of bitters. Appropriate indeed f...

Review: Wunderkammer, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars When circus moves its audience, it usually does so via the extraordinary, with feats of grace or daring. We marvel ...

Review: Lullaby, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars Lullaby , the latest theatrical inversion from crack cabaret outfit Duckie , sets out to be a snooze-fest. It is a ...

Review: Total Football, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars For over half a century, the British stage has been characterised as feverishly hankering after the state of the na...

Review: And the Horse You Rode In On, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars Screwball comedies aren’t renowned for their intertextuality. Mind you, it’s equally rare to find a fart gag in the...

Review: I guess if the stage exploded, SPILL Festival

Written for Culture Wars Slyvia Rimat’s attempt to create an absolutely unforgettable performance is more interesting conceptually than it i...

Review: On the Concept of the Face, SPILL Festival

Written for Culture Wars An old man repeatedly losing control of his bowels in front of a vast portrait of Christ, which eventually ‘cries’ ...

Review: Do What Thou Wilt, SPILL Festival

Written for Culture Wars About sixty of us have just watched a nude man, drenched in some sort of bitumen-like substance, wrenched upwards t...

Review: datamatics [ver 2.0], SPILL Festival

Written for Culture Wars It feels, at times, like being tasered. The fierce walls of sound – some low and heavy blows, others high, stabbing...

Review: The Antonioni Project, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars Is love a luxury? It’s hard not to think so when these three entwining romances, none of which sail plainly, are su...

Review: Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars Productivity must be rather difficult when your place of work is a metaphor, so spare a thought of the two pen-push...

Review: Flyboy is Alone Again This Christmas, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars Now, don't get me wrong: I like Flyboy, Matthew Robins' mutant schoolboy, half-human, half-fly. I like the ...