David Guest Archives - Page 16 of 20

Lexicon

Roundhouse

Reviewed – 7th January 2020

★★★★

“a mind-blowing collection of traditional circus skills taken beyond normal boundaries, unruly and unorthodox, all delighting in the art of misbehaving”

Circus skills with a mischievous edge delight and excite with the magical Lexicon, the latest offering from NoFit State Circus at the Roundhouse.

From an opening featuring badly behaved pupils in a classroom (complete with flying desks and a fierce tightrope walking teacher) the subject matter of this NoFit State Circus show is clear: this is all about presenting the wonderful basics of circus art then anarchically expanding the vocabulary of the form to create something both contemporary and forward-looking.

From the moment you arrive at the Roundhouse – a perfect venue for this show as the auditorium looks for all the world like a Big Top – you are involved with the action. Musicians play around the foyers, quick tricks are performed as you take your seats and you may find the person seated next to you is suddenly whisked up on wires to join in the acrobatic feats.

Lexicon is a maelstrom of nail biting energy and endurance – at times there is almost too much going on in the ring as by watching one band of performers you miss several more. But this non-stop approach adds to the breathtaking whole as auteur/director Firenza Guidi and the committed company deliberately throw all they can at the audience, challenging them not to have their breath taken away in bursts of rebellion.

This is a mind-blowing collection of traditional circus skills taken beyond normal boundaries, unruly and unorthodox, all delighting in the art of misbehaving. At the outset we are told to crave words and learn truth but the language in this dictionary is agility and unlimited energy where actions speak louder than words and expectations are constantly defied.

There’s geekiness as a bullied “pupil” performs increasingly dexterous unicycling exploits: Sam Goodburn becomes an audience favourite as he changes clothes on the cycle, gives a towering performance on a tall cycle and finally rides along a line of upturned wine glasses.

There’s clownish laughter provided by the likes of Luke Hallgarten who performs some daring fire juggling though keeps setting himself alight, Luca Morrocchi showing off pure physical fitness on the Chinese pole bringing an 800-year-old art form bang up to date and a cheeky kilted Davide Salodini on a walking globe.

And there’s the seductive charm of Lyndall Merry on the swinging trapeze, a flying showman flaunting sex appeal alongside mind-boggling deftness.

The unconventional costumes (Rhiannon Matthews) add to the sense of the traditional being turned on its head, a cavalcade of carnival steam punk and the design (Nic Von Der Borch and Saz Moir) blends the old and the new, giving old-fashioned traditional rigging the appearance of something from a sci-fi movie.

Equally impressive is the live music: many of the performers dart from circus art toe singing or playing instruments and David Murray’s cross-cultural compositions are worthy of a standalone live concert performance.

It’s impossible not to be impressed by the ever-present riggers: there is wizardry in the way they provide the balances and counterweights to the incredible aerial stunts, perpetual motion which is as eye-catching as the acts themselves.

True, some of the acts seem to slow down the relentless energy, but so much is fresh and vibrant that something new is never far behind.

Lexicon is heartfelt, humorous and high-energy from start to finish. It may even have the power to persuade a whole new generation that their ambition is to run away and join the circus. At the very least it is proof that one of the most traditional forms of theatre and art is alive and kicking with a dazzling insurgence.

Reviewed by David Guest

Photography by David Levene

Lexicon

Roundhouse until 18th January

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Relentless Unstoppable Human Machine | ★★★★★ | April 2018

The Bekkrell Effect | ★★★ | April 2018

I Knew You | ★★★★★ | June 2018

Jade Anouka Poetry | ★★★★★ | June 2018

Click here to see our most recent reviews

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Tower Theatre

Reviewed – 6th January 2020

★★★

“occasionally bewilders and sometimes misses both mark and humour, but is never less than fascinating and intensely real”

A quintessentially English play is being given a fascinating and refreshingly cosmopolitan spin at the Tower Theatre with Pan Productions’ new take on the Oscar Wilde classic The Importance of Being Earnest – played by immigrants.

The play is a comedy in which the leading characters create false identities in order to escape familial and social responsibilities. So it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to comprehend the thinking behind the enterprising company bringing people from different cultures and languages together to explore what it means to be from somewhere else and answer the question of “who am I?” rather than “where am I from?”

It is a decidedly ambitious project for a group of actors and creatives who spoke their first words in different languages but have made the UK their home.

As the audience enters they are greeted by the characters frozen on stage, occasionally twitching as though waiting to be brought back to life. It is the “Maid” (Nea Cornér) who awakens them and indeed she is at the core of what the production is aiming to do. Cornér moves silently around the foyer in character before the show starts, observing and assessing the audience. In the play she is the two butlers, Lane and Merriman, who Wilde uses to expose the shortcomings of the ridiculous upper class; here, although given few lines, she is the most confident when performing in English (she opens the play by faultlessly quoting Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy) and it is she who corrects the actors when they slip into their own language or mispronounce words. Oddly, and often distractingly, she also capers around in the background during other scenes, which is increasingly mystifying.

The concept of “foreigners” performing stereotypical English roles is something Swiss-Turkish director Aylin Bozok enjoys playing with. The slight problem here is that each of the actors is clearly eminently capable of understanding Wilde’s words and characters and indeed they all do it rather well, which means that some of the rationale of the whole production is lost, as we don’t ever truly believe they are out of their comfort zone.

There are some exceptionally strong performances from the multicultural cast. Rarely has the character of Lady Bracknell been so rounded as Ece Özdemiroğlu skilfully suggests a snooty aristocrat who has risen through the classes, desperate to ensure her relatives achieve a social standing that she was not born to.

The leading romantic quartet of the piece is a delight, their awkwardness in matters of the heart reflecting their supposed discomfort with the play as actors. Louis Pottier Arniaud and Duncan Rowe play Jack and Algie as though to the comedy of manners born, while Pinar Öğün and Glykeria Dimou come closest to making us believe their uncomfortable vulnerability as a Turkish and Greek born duo respectively playing Gwendolen and Cecily.

Serpil Delice (as a strait-laced Miss Prism) and Irem Çavuşoğlu (Rev. Chasuble) complete the hard-working cast and add to the idea of identities being created and adapgted through private and public personas.

Bozok has also designed this production, a simple set on a large performing area consisting of a sofa, a bench and carpets, suggesting that this represents the expectations of a comedy about the elite by those unfamiliar with it. The black and white costumes also suggest a confinement of the actors’ creativity.

Sound (Neil McKeown) and lighting (Morgan Richards) are notably well-designed, sometimes enhancing a mood, occasionally standing in startling contrast to it.

Oscar Wilde once said, “I love acting. It is so much more real than life.” This production of The Importance of Being Earnest rediscovers, reinvents and reconstructs the text and story in a way that occasionally bewilders and sometimes misses both mark and humour, but is never less than fascinating and intensely real.

Roundhouse

Reviewed – 7th January 2020

★★★★

“a mind-blowing collection of traditional circus skills taken beyond normal boundaries, unruly and unorthodox, all delighting in the art of misbehaving”

Circus skills with a mischievous edge delight and excite with the magical Lexicon, the latest offering from NoFit State Circus at the Roundhouse.

There’s geekiness as a bullied “pupil” performs increasingly dexterous unicycling exploits: Sam Goodburn becomes an audience favourite as he changes clothes on the cycle, gives a towering performance on a tall cycle and finally rides along a line of upturned wine glasses.

And there’s the seductive charm of Lyndall Merry on the swinging trapeze, a flying showman flaunting sex appeal alongside mind-boggling deftness.

Equally impressive is the live music: many of the performers dart from circus art toe singing or playing instruments and David Murray’s cross-cultural compositions are worthy of a standalone live concert performance.

It’s impossible not to be impressed by the ever-present riggers: there is wizardry in the way they provide the balances and counterweights to the incredible aerial stunts, perpetual motion which is as eye-catching as the acts themselves.

True, some of the acts seem to slow down the relentless energy, but so much is fresh and vibrant that something new is never far behind.

Reviewed by David Guest

Photography by David Levene

Lexicon

Roundhouse until 18th January

Previously reviewed at this venue:

The Tower Theatre

Reviewed – 6th January 2020

★★★

“occasionally bewilders and sometimes misses both mark and humour, but is never less than fascinating and intensely real”

A quintessentially English play is being given a fascinating and refreshingly cosmopolitan spin at the Tower Theatre with Pan Productions’ new take on the Oscar Wilde classic The Importance of Being Earnest – played by immigrants.

It is a decidedly ambitious project for a group of actors and creatives who spoke their first words in different languages but have made the UK their home.

Serpil Delice (as a strait-laced Miss Prism) and Irem Çavuşoğlu (Rev. Chasuble) complete the hard-working cast and add to the idea of identities being created and adapgted through private and public personas.

Sound (Neil McKeown) and lighting (Morgan Richards) are notably well-designed, sometimes enhancing a mood, occasionally standing in startling contrast to it.

Reviewed by David Guest

Photography by Pozi Pyraz Saroglu

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Tower Theatre until 18th January

Previously reviewed at this venue: