REVIEW: Re-INCARNATION
Reading Time: 2 minutesChoreographed by Qudus Onikeku and presented by Dance Consortium, Re:INCARNATION endeavours to bring about Nigerian culture and the vibrance of Lagos - the metropolis of West Africa - to the UK audience.
Category ★★★½☆
REVIEW: Portals and Parallels: Oxford’s Hidden Worlds
Reading Time: 2 minutesPortals and Parallels exposes the duality between Oxford’s privileged surface and the often overlooked areas within it in an informative and entirely unique manner.
REVIEW: Have You Met Stan?
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe black box studio at the Burton Taylor Theatre was an intimate and atmospheric backdrop to this brand-new musical, making its debut at the Oxford’s Offbeat Festival. Soundtracked by a fantastic live band (Georgia Ayew on drums, Jennie Beard on bass and writer-composer Bart Thiede on keys), the show follows the relationship between Séan from Ireland (Liam McGrath) and Stan from Poland (Cam Gray), as they navigate their way through the complexities of EU migration, religious upbringing and LGBTQI+ identities.
REVIEW: Why Am I So Single?
Reading Time: 3 minutesLucy Moss and Toby Marlow, responsible for the masterpiece of Six, return to the West End with Why Am I So Single? and expectations are justifiably high.
REVIEW: Electra Untitled
Reading Time: 2 minutesOxford’s Offbeat Festival and The Old Fire Station welcomed award-winning, female and queer-led company Vertebra Theatre to the stage with Electra Untitled, their modern adaptation of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy.
REVIEW: 555: Verlaine en Prison
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhen I was a teenager, the story of Verlaine and Rimbaud was once my favourite: intense passion, unrequited love and resentment, rebel and blood ... such an abundance for fanfic creation, but none comparable to the origin. By the way, Rimbaud also declared the death of God slightly earlier than Friedrich Nietzsche. I mean, who can resist that?
REVIEW: The Sex Lives of Puppets
Reading Time: 2 minutesA gonorrhea outbreak in an old folks’ home; a banker who is “sexually a cat”; a young man extolling the virtues of being choked. Such are the gems drawn from interviews in the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL), and played out by puppets in The Sex Lives of Puppets. Despite their dull, staring black eyes and gurning faces, deft manpulatio and skillful voice-acting lend a startling likeability and authenticity to the characters onstage. Similarly, The Sex Lives of Puppets is more than a little macabre, but also filled to the brim with personality, and possessed of a uniquely weird charm.
REVIEW: Why We Left Home
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhy We Left Home is a light-hearted, slightly awkward comedic mime scratch conceived and performed by Taiwanese artist Hector T.J. Huang. Starting with a miniature sandbox representing their living room back home, Huang explores their journey away from home, depicting a bit shy and nervous protagonist through their improvisational skills.
REVIEW: Bitter Lemons
Reading Time: 2 minutesBitter Lemons, a two-hander by writer Lucy Hayes, follows the contrasting though skilfully interlinked stories of two young women, both newly promoted, fizzing with nerves in anticipation of the biggest professional challenges of their careers to date. The first, a professional goalkeeper (Chanel Waddock) dealing with the grief of losing her father, and the second, an ambitious banker (Shannon Hayes) navigating tokenism in the professional world. By the end of the first act the sales pitch and football pitch collide as their lives meet in parallel.
REVIEW: State Ballet of Georgia: Swan Lake
Reading Time: 3 minutesMaybe a bit reluctantly yet curiously, we'd love to sneak a peek into the exotic taste of Soviet legacy of ballet tradition. This is most prominent in ACT I, where the ensemble dances in a gentle and airy style, utterly different from what we typically see here in the UK. If you are especially used to the more powerful and vital presentation here, you may find the Georgian style too soft and light. You may even tell from their different shapes of ballet hands: their fingertips are slightly more curved, their middle fingers slightly lowered, and the overall curve more fluid.