Tag: london

FEATURE: Collective Fringe Scratch Night 

Published on by mirandalangleyLeave a comment

Collective Fringe returns with its opening Scratch Night: an evening of six new short plays presented as 20-minute excerpts. Just as countless early-career writers and performers have cut their teeth on London’s scratch-night scene — Michaela Coel, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd among them — it is heartening to see young artists at Collective Acting Studio breathing new life into this much-loved format. One of the UK’s most dynamic part-time training institutions, the school is dedicated to nurturing talent from underrepresented backgrounds. Staged in an impressive Grade II-listed former public bathhouse, now home to a 100-seat theatre, this Scratch Night offers a vital platform for voices at the very start of their creative journeys.

The venue itself is warm, inviting and polished, with industrial remnants sitting comfortably alongside a state-of-the-art technical set-up. It feels like a space — and a fringe festival — poised to become an exciting arts hub for years to come. The intimacy of the theatre suits the work well, with all pieces featuring small casts and largely naturalistic styles. A special mention must go to the friendly and supportive front-of-house team, who set the tone for a welcoming evening.

The subjects of the plays are wide-ranging, moving at a cracking pace from folk horror to romantic comedy, and transporting audiences to illegal raves, seaside towns and dystopian futures along the way. Many of the works foreground neurodivergent and queer voices, making the programme as thought-provoking as it is entertaining. Several writers also direct their own pieces, and this hands-on approach brings clarity, focus and a strong sense of artistic intent to the night.

When they say “scratch,” they really mean it — with some performances delivered script-in-hand. It is a testament to the courage and commitment of the actors that the performances shine regardless. The camaraderie, generosity and talent of the cast carry the evening, prompting a warm response from the audience. Many of these young performers clearly have bright futures ahead of them.

With a large and attentive audience in attendance, it is encouraging to see Collective Acting Studio in a period of exciting development, both in London and at an outpost in Birmingham. The school offers courses accessible to students from a range of economic backgrounds, with many alumni already making waves in the industry — due in no small part to the work of founder Paul Harvard. Rather than defaulting to classical showcase material, this Scratch Night demonstrates just how exciting new writing can be. Refreshingly free of the stuffy elitism that can characterise similar institutions, the school embodies one of drama training’s core purposes: fostering collaboration, creativity and community.

Collective Fringe runs until the 25th, featuring longer performances from a similarly varied programme of new writing. I highly recommend booking a ticket to catch a glimpse of the stars of the future.

REVIEW: I Do

Published on by Tabitha JamesLeave a comment

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

An emotive, honest insight into the chaos before “I do”.

Dante or Die’s I Do, revived as part of the company’s 20th anniversary season and presented in partnership with the Barbican, is an immersive theatre experience that places audiences directly inside the emotional pressure cooker of a wedding day. Staged across six hotel rooms in the Malmaison near Farringdon, the production unfolds in the fraught 15 minutes before Georgina and Tunde’s ceremony is due to begin. From the moment you enter, there is a palpable sense of suspended time: a corridor thick with anticipation, urgency and nerves as audience members are quietly shuffled from door to door.

Each room reveals a different fragment of the wedding party’s inner lives. Parents, children, partners and friends are caught in moments of doubt, resentment, love and longing, their stories overlapping as the clock ticks relentlessly towards the ceremony. Writer Chloë Moss’s script is unflinchingly honest about everyday relationships, and creators Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan have transformed a familiar, almost banal life event into something intimate and deeply engaging. Direction by Attias is particularly assured, allowing scenes to play with emotional clarity while making imaginative use of the hotel rooms themselves. The staging, led by meticulous stage management, ensures each space feels lived-in and specific, rich with detail that quietly extends the storytelling.

That attention to detail is, paradoxically, also one of the show’s frustrations. With around a dozen audience members packed into each room, scenes can feel cramped, and the rapid movement between spaces leaves little time to absorb the carefully placed props and environmental storytelling. A few extra minutes either side of scenes, or slightly smaller audience groups, would allow the immersive world to breathe and be fully taken in. On the night attended, the performance also ran almost half an hour over its advertised running time, but I imagine this will be addressed as the company finds its feet in its new home.

Performances across the cast are strong, with Manish Gandhi’s Joe standing out for his emotional precision and restraint. Fred Fergus’s Nick is compelling, though occasionally feels like a character who could benefit from greater depth. One of the most affecting scenes belongs to Geof Atwell and Fiona Watson as Gordon and Eileen, whose portrayal of a declining grandfather and his partner is so raw that it visibly moved an audience member to tears. These moments are often confronting and isolating – there is no distance here, no way to escape – and every other audience member’s breath, glance and reaction shapes your own experience of the story.

The Cleaner, played on this occasion by Terry O’Donovan, functions as a connective thread between scenes. While the role is conceptually effective, his repeated presence in the already crowded corridor sometimes denies the audience a moment of quiet reflection between emotionally heavy encounters. A brief pause to reset might heighten, rather than diffuse, the impact of the next scene that follows.

Ultimately, I Do is a fascinating study of ordinariness: a deeply human exploration of marriage, family and the expectations we place on one another. It gently but persistently asks what marriage means – and doesn’t mean – to its characters and, by extension, to the audience themselves. Despite minor logistical issues, this revival remains a novel, affecting and worthwhile experience, offering immersive theatre at its most intimate and emotionally resonant.

This show runs at Malmaison until 8th February before embarking on a short tour. Programme here.

Image Credit: Pierre Tappon

REVIEW: Modern Milestones

Published on by Tom MalachiLeave a comment

Rating: 5 out of 5.

“Five Variations of Equally Exceptional Modern Dance”

Yorke Dance Project’s Modern Milestones is a collection of five pieces of contemporary dance. It places older works by pioneering choreographers in conversations with two new works having their London premieres. In order, they are: Martha Graham’s Deep Song; Liam Francis’ CAST [X]; Robert Cohan’s Lacrymosa; Bella Lewitzky’s Kinaesonata; and Christoper Bruce’s Troubadour.

These works are all modern – in the sense that they ask what dance can be; all expertly danced; and all very beautiful.

It is one-hundred years since Martha Graham founded her company. First shown in 1937, Deep Song still feels like an astoundingly daring piece of dance to make. Made in response to the Spanish Civil War and with a set and costuming alluding to Picasso’s Guernica, it is a dance in which emotional turmoil and vulnerability are made legible through the body. Amy Thake dances it with powerful, moving brilliance. Through Graham’s series of contractions and releases she plots a course that finds countless textures for the emotions Graham is exploring.

CAST [X] is choreographed by the company’s own Liam Francis, who also dances in it. From darkness and the murmur of voices, comes a spotlight and four figures seemingly caught in the act. What this act is and who is guilty becomes the central questions of the dance. In the best way possible the piece is reminiscent (but not derivative) of Crystal Pite’s The Statement. The four dancers are in constant movement – they seem to form alliances and conspiracies that dissolve as quickly as they appear. In a lesser choreographer’s and dancers’ hands this could become a messy swirl – not here. The countless stories he offers and weaves together are conceived and danced with absolute, precise clarity. The beautiful balancing act of CAST [X] is that this precision does not dull the joy and volatility of the piece.

Lacrymosa tells with dance one of the oldest stories we have: after a long time apart, two people reunite. Cohan’s title implies Christ and Mary but Lacrymosa has a universality to it. Eileih Muir and Jonathan Goddard play with this universality – at moments they are a mother and child, at others two long-lost lovers. They become like a binary star, twisting around one another, bound together and yet unable to come to rest together.

1970s Kinaesonata, choreographed by the much-underperformed Bella Lewitzky, finds a joy and fascination in what it is possible for the body to do. In bright costumes eight dancers move in seemingly every possible way. Kinaesonata stuns you with how it keeps finding new ideas to fold into itself, new shapes, new lifts, new rhythms – it grows with these ideas, almost shimmering with energy by the end. It is a technically demanding dance but danced perfectly. It’s not that perfection itself is beautiful but that so many versions of perfection strung together becomes wonderfully mesmeric.

Finally, the longest piece of Modern Milestones is Christopher Bruce’s Troubadour. With a soundtrack made from a live recording of Leonard Cohen in London, Troubadour explores what it means to be on the road making art for a living. But it is not just sentimental homage, whilst Troubadour celebrates Cohen it goes beyond that – it finds misery and sacrifices in this life too. Troubadour becomes about what it means to give things up for one’s art, something which all brilliant dancers know all too well. It is a strangely sad piece but one, as you have surely come to expect, that is soul-twistingly beautiful.

Modern Milestones is brilliantly chosen and danced. It is beautiful but also goes beyond that; it’s erudite and challenges its audience. Perhaps the highest compliment I can give it is that it is truly modern – it stands at the edges of what we know dance at its best can be and looking outward from there. What is that, if not modern?

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Brendan Murray

Published on by Antonia ConstantinLeave a comment

A tender but unflinching look at the messy complexity of love, lies, loss & sexuality, Learning How to Drive tells the story of three people facing the reality of what it means to truly know someone. We sat down with award winning writer, Brendan Murray, to discuss their upcoming production. Learning How to Drive plays at the White Bear Theatre 10th – 21st February. Tickets are available here.

Learning How to Dive explores the shock of discovering you never fully knew the person closest to you — what first drew you to that emotional fault line as the heart of the play?

The play grew out of my own personal experience of being “the other woman”. For over thirty years I’ve been having (and still am) what I suppose you’d call an affair with a married man. I know just about everything about his life and family but (as far as we’re both aware) they know nothing about me or our relationship. In the play, Barry (the fictionalised version of my partner) dies and Matt – one of his sons – discovers that his adored father has had a second, secret life, and Jill – his widow – comes to realise the woman she thought her husband had been seeing for years was/is in fact a man. 

How did you approach writing about grief and hidden sexuality without allowing either to become a “reveal,” but instead something quieter and more human?

As I’ve said, the play grew out of my own experience / story – and, as a gay man of nearly seventy, I was also part of the generation touched by AIDS. I lost several friends – three of them former partners – to the disease, so death / grief / loss / sexuality have long been recurring (albeit sometimes tacit) themes in my work – even my work for children. For me, these things are part of the fabric of my life and experience, not mere dramatic devices. 

The play spans love, lies, and memory across generations — did your perspective on these themes change as you revisited playwriting after so many years?

For the past thirty-five years or so (after I stopped acting) I’ve been a writer first, director second and teacher third. Of course, you fall out of fashion / the people who commissioned you retire or die but I’ve never stopped and, happily, my back catalogue continues to be produced both in the UK and (even more so) in Europe and the USA. Of course, over the years (living / loving / losing) your perspective shifts. Maybe you become more forgiving, more interested in character / less in plot. It’s no coincidence that my favourite playwright (bar none) is Chekhov. 

What felt most different, or most confronting, about returning to the stage as an actor in a story you also wrote?

It’s true that I stopped acting in the late 80s, but I never moved away from theatre / the stage. I wrote for the stage / for actors. I directed plays / actors and – maybe most importantly of all – I taught acting at several London drama schools. I thought long and hard about acting and what it means to be an actor. In many ways my teaching was based on / a reaction to all the things I felt I’d done wrong when I was starting out. Coming back to it after nearly forty years (in a semi-autobiographical play) I worried about things like remembering lines (could I do it anymore?) but feel strangely liberated. I’m not building a career / don’t need people to like me. My ego is no longer an obstacle. I can just listen / respond / be. 

The piece is described as tender yet unflinching — where did you feel it was most important not to soften the truth for the audience?

The piece is based on / explores / invites the audience to reflect on / respond to the messy complexities of life / love / loss / lies. Warts and all to coin a cliché. It felt important to write from the heart – the positives / the negatives, the beauty / the mess of it / the truth. I wanted the audience to identify with / feel the resonance of the story I was telling. Big things in the lives of small people / what it means to be human.

At its core, the play asks what it really means to know someone — after writing it, has your own answer to that question shifted?

I’m not sure I was looking for an answer (either for myself or the audience) but rather a better understanding. There’s a line towards the end of the first act where Terry (the lover) is talking to Matt (the son) about his now deceased dad; I think this might sum it up: I know it’s hard, some of the things you’re finding out – same here – but they were part of him. You can’t choose the bits you want. That isn’t love. 

IN CONVERSATION WITH:Maia Kirkman

Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

Presented by esk and Roast Productions. Quentin Blake’s Mrs Armitage on Wheels has been developed in association with Eagle Eye and Little Angel Theatre and based on the BBC animated series Quentin Blake’s Box of Treasures, available on BBC iPlayer. We sat down with Maia to talk about this production.

Mrs Armitage’s inventions feel endlessly inventive and joyfully impractical. How did you approach translating Quentin Blake’s distinctive drawings and animated energy into puppets that live and breathe on stage?

Adapting any book for the stage always poses such an exciting challenge for me because it’s all about getting the right balance between the responsibility to be faithful to those recognisable, loved characters while also wanting to push my own creativity and add some of my own imagination into the fold.

With Quentin Blake’s illustrations specifically it’s been a joyful task.  His illustrations are so distinctive and expressive and have a real mischievous energy about them, so it was really exciting to translate them into 3D objects with that same sense of mischievous movement.

The puppetry that you will see onstage has been a real collaborative effort.  Every artist on the project has contributed to bringing Breakspear and Mrs Armitage’s inventions to life – lines have been added into songs, playful spaces and platforms have been created on the set, costumes have been adapted to suit movements and provide sneaky storage, gaps have been left within the narrative for us to continue to play throughout rehearsals and  talented puppeteers have been hired to help us skilfully bring things to life… it takes a village!

Puppetry often sits somewhere between the visible and the invisible. What conversations did you have with the director about when the audience should “see” the puppetry at work, and when they should simply believe in it?

This is a great question!  Samantha (our director) was quite clear from the start that Breakspear and the hedgehogs were essentially ‘real’ characters and were different from the imagined object characters that Mrs Armitage conjures up.

That being said, I do love theatrical puppetry because it really invites the audience to suspend their disbelief and invest their own imaginations into what they are watching.  As an audience member, we can literally see that the dog is a puppet, being held up by a puppeteer – we know it’s not actually real.  Yet through convincing movement and focus, we choose to erase the puppeteer out of the picture and see the dog as a real, living, breathing character with true emotions.  

When I was younger, I remember watching a magician perform a trick and being amazed.  He then revealed exactly how he did the trick, which you might think would take that special magic out of it.  However when he then repeated the trick, despite the fact that I then knew exactly how he was doing it, he still amazed me and actually it felt even more magical!  Although I knew how he was doing it, he still fooled me.  I think puppetry creates that same sense of wonder – we know exactly what’s going on and can see all of the inner workings on display, and yet we still choose to see real life in the objects.  I love that.

This show is aimed at very young audiences, but Blake’s work always carries layers for adults too. How do you design puppetry that sparks wonder for children while still engaging the imaginations of the grown-ups watching alongside them?

It sounds cheesy but I really do believe that puppetry is for everyone.  For me, it’s all about creating a puppet that has enough detail to sell a character, but also leaves enough of a blank canvas to invite the audience to add their own imagination onto it.  Puppetry is all about losing yourself in the art of play – children are already experts at this and I hope that for the adults watching, it’ll be a joyful reminder of the power of imagination and the art of letting go.

Mrs Armitage is an inventor who solves problems by making things. Did you see any parallels between her creative mindset and the process of designing puppets, where trial, error, and play are essential?

Ohhhhh loads haha!!  Mrs Armitage would be a great puppet maker actually…. our workspaces and ways of thinking are actually scarily similar.  There was a moment during our R&D period where I was watching Mrs Armitage tinkering around in her chaotic shed, gluing objects to other objects and being totally lost in her own unhinged, creative thoughts and it all felt very familiar!

I think that if we’re lucky, we should all possess a bit of Mrs Armitage’s spirit.  She looks at the world through a creative lense and solves problems through play and trial and error which is how I like to work.  

The story celebrates community, collaboration, and generosity. How does puppetry, as an art form that relies so heavily on teamwork, help reinforce those themes on stage?

You’re spot on there – puppetry is all about collaboration and everything that you see on stage throughout this performance will be a demonstration of that.  The entire creative team has worked so closely to make sure that each of our departments enriches and supports each other.  

I think probably the most direct example of collaboration within the show is with Mrs Armitage’s bicycle which is truly a feat of collaborative imagination and strength.  It’s a good metaphor for the story, really: none of these inventions – or this show – works unless people are willing to lend a hand, literally.

You’ve worked across large-scale productions and intimate family shows. What excites you most about creating puppetry for a festival like ‘Imagine’, where curiosity and imagination are very much at the centre of the experience?

A festival like ‘Imagine’ gives you permission and encouragement to be wonderfully curious and unapologetically playful.  You know that the audience has come in with their imagination already switched on, so you can be a bit braver: show the inner workings, invite them to fill in the gaps, trust that they’ll meet you halfway.  I think festivals also give you direct access to reach new audiences who may not have otherwise heard about or engaged with your work.  Fingers crossed there’ll be some people out there in the audience who may be watching puppetry for the first time, so I hope to entertain and inspire them.

Listing info and tickets can be found here.

REVIEW: Safe Haven

Published on by jaketurnerchanLeave a comment

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

‘A focus on western diplomacy dulls a genuinely terrifying period of Kurdish history’

On the night I saw Safe Haven, there was a performance by Kurdish musicians prior to the start of the play, and the walls of the Arcola Theatre were hung with historic photographs showing the events the play seeks to retell, accompanied by some useful placard information. There was a clear amount of care given to this night that gave a real impression of centring the culture and lives of the Kurdish people who the play seemed to centre around. Written by Chris Bowers, a former British diplomat, the play has some great insight on the governmental process of diplomacy. He clearly seeks to shine a light on a minoritised history most forget, but this centering on western diplomats ultimately limits the play’s narrative capability.

The show follows Catherine (Beth Burrows), a diplomat working for the British government, trying to manage the aftermath of the first gulf war. Paired with Clive (Richard Lynson), the two work to try and figure out a way to protect the Kurdish people fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime, two of which are Najat (Eugenie Bouda) and Zeyra (Lisa Zahra).

Lisa Zahra is an undoubtable standout in the show. Her performance has an adaptability and distinction that allows her to play both the wife of a diplomat (Anne) and a Kurdish refugee (Zeyra). Props must also be given to Beth Burrows, who handles the show’s narration with care, and Mazum Gül, who gives the story some of the urgency it needs, playing the real-life Iraqi diplomat, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and real-life Kurdish activist Dlawer Ala’Aldeen. Gül does not get much stage time as these characters, which was surprising given the subject matter. It is unclear whether or not Catherine and Clive are real people also. 

Some design choices felt a little confused, with props left onstage and a split stage that didn’t always feel necessary. Scenes taking place between office furniture and garden furniture could have taken place on the same blocks, given the play’s already non-naturalistic design. This would have given more space to the storyline following the Kurdish women fleeing. During their scenes, it often felt like they were working around these sets, which was somewhat how the show felt as a whole. The stories of the Kurdish characters felt somewhat secondary to the story of the British diplomats. Seeing the process of diplomacy laid out was insightful, but this didn’t quite carry the same urgency as the plight of the Kurdish people fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime, so having them side by side, felt like a jarring contrast. The focus on this diplomacy dulls what could be a far more gripping play. It would have helped to see how the movement around this mountain range was physically exhausting and restrictive for our Kurdish characters, but working around these constant sets of Western offices and garden tables made for a somewhat subdued environment.

At the end, Clive congratulates Catherine saying “It’s not everyday someone tries to stop a genocide”, presenting her kind of diplomacy as something sort of noble. But it is her paid job, and the sudden discussion between the two about working against or within the system would be an interesting angle if it had been explored throughout the play. Catherine drops a line about how many Kurdish people and children died during the pass through the mountains, which came as a total surprise, given this is not mentioned or portrayed at all prior to this conversation, which only comes after the safe haven has been formed and agreed to. 

It’s clear that Bowers has experience in diplomacy. The script is thorough to the point of overdensity. For someone well studied in politics and its functions, the show might be insightful. But for others, there is less focus on the human aspects of the play, even if they’ve been considered. Bowers’ efforts to include Kurdish characters in this narrative are appreciated, but incomplete. There is no stage time given to the Kurdish protestors who staged protests in London in 1991, occupying the Iraqi embassy, storming the Turkish one too. It is a bit of a travesty that the actions of those who were equally instrumental in getting the government to act are failed to be represented at all on stage.

FEATURE: Space at St Martin-in-the-Fields: a cosmic night out in the heart of London

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If your idea of a perfect winter evening involves glowing galaxies, immersive soundscapes and standing beneath a sky full of stars without leaving Zone 1, then Space at St Martin-in-the-Fields should be firmly on your radar.

Landing in London from Tuesday 17 to Saturday 21 February 2026, this dazzling sound and light experience by Luxmuralis transforms one of the capital’s most iconic buildings into a walk-through journey across the universe. Having already popped up — and sold out — in cities across the UK, Space returns bigger, bolder and more awe-inducing than ever.

The experience begins outside, where the exterior of St Martin’s is illuminated with spectacular projections that ripple across its historic façade. Think stars bursting into life, planets drifting into view and humanity’s story written across the stone itself. From there, visitors follow a gentle trail into the church, stepping deeper into a world of light, colour and sound.

Inside, it’s fully immersive. Projections spill across walls and ceilings, accompanied by a bespoke atmospheric soundtrack that pulls you into scenes of rocket launches, the Big Bang and galaxies forming before your eyes. One moment you’re watching the universe ignite; the next, you’re reflecting on Earth’s fragile place within it all.

The journey reaches its emotional peak in the church’s underground crypt, where you’re surrounded by twinkling lights and looping constellations — part silent disco, part cosmic meditation. It’s here that the experience invites you to pause, sit, and take it all in, as if gazing back at Earth from space itself.

Perfect for art lovers, music fans, space geeks and anyone after something a little different, Space manages to be both visually jaw-dropping and quietly thought-provoking. As Neil Armstrong once said, “We are so tiny in the system of things” — and this exhibition captures that feeling beautifully.

The full experience lasts around 30–60 minutes, with a 15-minute seated finale, though you’re welcome to linger and soak it all up. Tickets start from £8, and the courtyard café and bar will be open for pre- and post-show drinks.

A cosmic escape, right in the middle of London — no spacesuit required. For listing info, please find at http://www.smitf.org/SPACE

Credit: Dimitri Djuric

REVIEW: GBSR Duo, For Phillip Guston at King’s Place

Published on by Hebe Jones1 Comment

Rating: 4 out of 5.

There is no “right” way of listening to For Phillip Guston […] [it] is not just a listening exercise but a living one.

GBSR Duo, George Barton (percussion) and Siwan Rhys (piano), are one of the three artists in residence for Kings Place in 2026. Previously Kings Place has offered an annual series of award-winning performances surrounding a theme and this year’s programme is titled Memory Unwrapped; the series intends to get artists and their audiences ‘remembering the past to reimagine the future’.

The GBSR Duo have definitely a lot to offer the programme this year, their broad interest in 20th Century Modernism ranging from Stockhausen to Aphex Twin (a pairing which they are performing later this month at the Southbank Centre) affords an insightful and experimental take on the meaning of memory.

Their performance of renowned composer Morton Feldman’s single-movement work, For Phillip Guston, is a perfect example of their approach. Playing alongside Taylor MacLennan (flute, alto flute, piccolo) the ensemble took on the mammoth task of performing Feldman’s 4 and a half hour long composition with no interval. This performance is not for the faint of heart, not only is it a test of endurance (people complete marathons in less time) but it is also, aptly, a test in memory.

For Phillip Guston is a textured landscape of soft lasting sounds and motifs, whether it be from the tubular bells, celeste or piccolo the haunting range and duration of these phrases cause the ‘listener [to become] unable to retain everything they have heard […] unsure if they are hearing repetition, variation or new material’. Feldman’s composition is hypnotic, it is the deliberate desynchronising of the ensemble which gives an uneasy scale tipping quality to the beginning of the piece. Sounds between the trio are tipped back and forth in slow but constant motion, it takes some getting used to. Once you’re in, the experience becomes something totally unique and meditative in its journey.

There is no “right” way of listening to For Phillip Guston, I overheard an audience member say he had seen this piece once 15 years ago and “very sore bums” are to be expected. Throughout the performance I looked around and some people had shut their eyes, others nodded off. Fewer people than I expected walked out, there was continual readjustment of seating positions and someone, ridiculously, brought a baby which was quickly removed from the space. I definitely learnt something about myself during this rare performance. Focus, fatigue and curiosity came in constant waves. For Phillip Guston is not just a listening exercise but a living one, assisted by the fact that my watch had broken and my phone was off, I had no concept of time nor any idea of what four and half hours felt like.

Another clever angle this piece approaches memory from is the fact the work also serves as a memorialisation; a tribute to the close friendship between Feldman and the eponymous Abstract painter Phillip Guston. The pair became estranged in 1970, a decade prior to Guston’s death in 1980. Feldman felt betrayed that Guston had turned to figurative painting which in his mind was Guston effectively turning his back on the foundation of their friendship; their mutual love for Abstract Art and Music. They never reconciled. Yet the final half an hour of the piece feels hopeful. Its arrangement is more harmonious and pretty than previous parts and perhaps this is a slight sign of acceptance or reconciliation in grief.

Once I left the auditorium I honestly forgot what the piece sounded like, and I think that’s the point. The performance plays with your musical ear, constantly sounding both familiar and unfamiliar, blurring the lines between present and memory. For Phillip Guston is a listening experience unlike anything I’ve ever had before. As an audience member you are implored to immerse yourself in a long and intimate encounter with sound. The trio deserved the masses of applause for their discipline and focus. They performed this piece with such high fidelity and grace, it’s something I will never forget but I might wait 15 years to hear it again.

REVIEW: Aurora Orchestra with Brett Dean & Lotte Betts-Dean 

Published on by H HsuLeave a comment

Rating: 4 out of 5.

A night of music that was philosophical, lyrical, and highly palatable.

Memory, the experience of the past being retrieved, reconstructed, and relished by the mind, is always about echoes and reverberations across time. It is the mind’s continual rewriting of the past: two points separated in time, yet intersecting and overlapping, reunited by the device of memory.

The programming of Aurora Orchestra: Memory with Brett Dean and Lotte Betts-Dean made this idea unmistakably clear. It was not only about selecting songs that explicitly speak of memory, but also about tracing echoes through time itself, from Ravel’s echoing of Couperin, from György Kurtág’s tribute to Robert Klein and Joannis Pilinszky, and through the thematic connection between Kurtág and Charles Ives’ compositions. These echoes also appeared in musical motifs and tonalities, as well as in the iteration of repertoire, with the same composer’s work performed twice and sometimes placed both at the beginning and the end of the concert. An echo of time.

The night opened with Charles Ives’ Memories, arranged by Sebastian Gottschick. The contrast between the two songs, Very Pleasant, light-hearted and playful, and Rather Sad, as its title suggests, created a wonderful juxtaposition in colour that immediately set the tone for the evening. From there, the curation expanded into Baroque music such as Couperin, while also embracing contemporary rearrangements of recent popular music, including Radiohead’s Harry Patch (In Memory Of). The programme then led us into more expansive and philosophical territory: the grand questions of life in Mieczysław Weinberg’s Marta’s Aria from The Passenger; an exploration of the modern psyche through György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments; and the melancholic lyricism of Nadia Boulanger’s Versailles. Beyond musical versatility and the echoing of motifs, the curation offered a rich literary exploration of memory itself: memory as nostalgia, memory as longing for the loved one, memory as both personal and collective, and memory as a hopeful gaze towards the future.

The repertoire was curated in a way that felt highly accessible to the audience; even those unfamiliar with classical or contemporary music could enjoy it. The programme resembled a rich tapas spread, composed of distinctive yet carefully crafted small dishes. Each song or instrumental piece lasted only a few minutes, creating a constant renewal of curiosity and attention. This approach allowed for strong contrasts between pieces, as well as a vivid range of colours and emotions, from light-hearted playfulness to weighty, grand arias; from Kafkaesque intensity to hopefulness and joy.

Through the courage of presenting such a wide-ranging programme, spanning cultures, languages, and stretching across time, Lotte Betts-Dean and Brett Dean proved themselves to be audacious and masterful musicians, as well as thoughtful curators of a contemporary musical experience marked by forward vision and sensitivity to the audience of their time.

PC: Johan Persson

REVIEW: Woolf Works

Published on by ariellacomoLeave a comment

Rating: 5 out of 5.

“A gorgeous, immersive triptych that embodies Virginia Woolf’s life and writing through movement, light and composition. “

Olivier Award-winning Woolf Works returns as something genuinely rare: a revival that still feels alive, still feels discovered rather than dutifully revisited. Emotionally resonant and confident in its focus, Virginia Woolf’s sensibility is woven through every layer of the production, as though her prose has been absorbed into the atmosphere of the stage and re-expressed through bodies in motion.

Distilled from Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves, the ballet unfolds as a triptych: three distinct worlds that nevertheless feel rooted in the same interior terrain. Rather than illustrating narrative or text, the work translates Woolf’s writing – its rhythms, its poetry, its shifting perspective and lucidity – into composition, light, collective choreography. Stream of consciousness becomes physical: time layered and fragmented, meaning passing between writer and her work; memory carried through echoed and repeated movement.

The opening Mrs Dalloway section is particularly affecting. Identity feels doubled and echoed, with multiplied selves learning from one another, mirroring, supporting, carrying each other through joy as well as in harder times. There is a strong sense of companionship – across time, across inner lives – that seems to reach outward towards Woolf herself. The result is deeply moving, tender without sentimentality, and grounded in a sense of care between bodies. 

Throughout the piece, the dancers are asked for extraordinary physical precision and emotional restraint. McGregor’s movement language – elastic, angular, demanding – pushes classical technique into something sharper and more contemporary, while still allowing moments of softness and suspension. The performers meet this with clarity and control, creating a sense of collective intelligence rather than individual display.

The central Orlando panel breaks that intimacy open. Identity loosens and blurs; time folds in on itself; gender is slipped on and off, handed like a baton across centuries. This section is more playful, faster, more volatile – choreography and design moving in sync to suggest centuries collapsing into the present. Neon bright lighting design in greens and blues picks up haze – clouds framed by light, creating thresholds that the dancers move across in evolution. Costumes and silhouettes flicker between eras; bodies seem to mutate mid-phrase. At times, the density of ideas threatens to overwhelm, but the exhilaration of speed and transformation carries it through, injecting the evening with energy and wit.

Music and design play a crucial role across all three sections. The score underpins the work’s emotional architecture, blending playful electronics with orchestral swell, while lighting, film and spatial design create immersive environments that feel inhabited. These elements are meticulously layered: never illustrative, never decorative, but working together to shape atmosphere, rhythm and change through flow. The staging does not clamour for attention; it draws the audience in gradually, allowing emotion to accrue rather than resolve neatly.

The final section, The Waves, is devastating. It opens with a reading of Woolf’s suicide note, before her death by drowning – not as spectacle, but as an act of stillness that recalibrates everything that follows. From there, the movement feels fragile and inevitable. The dancers move as if carried by something larger than themselves, individual identity dissolving into the collective motion of the sea. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful ending that resists closure around loss while offering something like recognition. 

Overall, Woolf Works remains an immersive, atmospheric experience – an associative translation, emotive and sometimes quietly overwhelming. It is not a literal adaptation of Woolf’s writing, but something more elusive and more faithful: an evocation of her inner worlds, of identity blending and fracturing across time, of echoed meaning, rendered through the layered, indistinct and profoundly expressive medium of dance.