★★★

“if you’re up for a slightly trippy, truly unforgettable night of theatre, you’re in the right place”

Renowned French theatre maker Philippe Quesne’s ‘Farm Fatale’ crosses the Channel for a delightfully baffling UK debut. Blending performance art, social commentary and absurdist theatre, it’s nothing if not unique.

A band of scarecrows listens for birds long gone after the Anthropocene apocalypse. With nothing left to guard, the scarecrows find new meaning through music, activism and sacks of whimsy.

Created, designed and directed by Philippe Quesne of Vivarium Studio, ‘Farm Fatale’ drifts through a dreamlike world that poses more questions than it answers. With dramaturgy by Martin Valdés Stauber and Camille Louis, the scarecrows face a deeply existential question: who are we without purpose? Yet it’s handled with such humour, innocence and absurdity that the question feels anything but bleak. Narratively, the concept could use more bite – the ecological activism fades into a glowing egg subplot that’s harder to follow, and the apocalyptic logic strains when a neighbouring farmer suddenly has thousands of livestock. However, in tonight’s post show talk, Quesne likens it to a comic strip, and seen that way it clicks.

Quesne’s direction, supported by Jonny Bix Bongers and Dennis Metaxas, blends stillness and spectacle through sparse staging, suspended objects and a towering scaffold. The physical comedy is charming, full of knowingly exaggerated movements. The masks cleverly exaggerate the scarecrows’ grotesque features, though glimpses of human eyes and teeth beneath gives them a slightly unsettling ‘Silence of the Lambs’ edge. Quesne also sees the cast doubling as a band, serving whimsical live music including an entertaining mashup of ‘Dingle Dangle Scarecrow’ with a classic RnB beat – though the moment itself is one of the piece’s quirkier detours.

Quesne’s expansive white set, created with Nicole Marianna Wytyczak, evokes the moment cartoon characters run out of frame into nothingness – both surreal and quietly existential. Suspended objects add a playful deconstruction, while DIY props – including a pig piano – extend the show’s eccentric scarecrow logic. Nora Stocker’s costumes give each scarecrow a distinct personality, and Brigitte Frank’s masks heighten the surreality. Pit Schultheiss’ lighting shifts from stark white to kaleidoscopic colour, and Robert Göing and Anthony Hughes’ sound design layers pastoral textures across the canvas.

The ensemble of Léo Gobin, Sébastien Jacobs, Nuno Lucas, Anne Steffens and Gaëtan Vourc’h brings real joy and camaraderie to this band of scarecrows as they search for a new path. Their improv instincts and musicianship are sharp, and there’s some impressive singing too – though the masks occasionally make it tricky to tell who’s doing what. Even so, the ensemble’s spark and cohesion shine through.

‘Farm Fatale’ is more bonkers than barnyard – but if you’re up for a slightly trippy, truly unforgettable night of theatre, you’re in the right place.

VOLLMOND

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★★

“an exhilarating experience”

Vollmond, first premiered by Pina Bausch and her company Tanztheater Wuppertal in 2006, returns to Sadlers Wells in 2025. It is a welcome revival, following in the footsteps of the 2024 revival of Nelken. Once again, the Company assembles on stage to show us the essence of “tanztheater”—a unique creation of movement and dance that is Pina Bausch’ signature contribution to the world of dance. Beautifully costumed (design by Marion Cito), the dancers navigate Peter Pabst’s extraordinary set design. Vollmond is a wonderful, if often unsettling, way to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Vollmond—the word means “full moon” in German—is a dance about emotions often associated with this particular phase of the moon. The emotion of love is a big theme in this show but it’s complex and often ironic. As everyone knows, full moons also have a particular association with high tides. It’s no surprise then, to find that water figures prominently in the show. Lots and lots of water. What Pina Bausch’s dancers do with that water, and how water gradually takes over Peter Pabst’s deceptively simple set is what surprises.

The work begins with dancers entering the space in pairs to make their moves on one another. Water is present, or rather absent, right from the start. Armed with empty water bottles, the dancers begin by making sounds by flinging the bottles about. Bottles are replaced with staves, and before we quite know it, we are in the middle of battles between various couples who court by confrontation. They push each other across the stage with kisses, or shake each other by the shoulders or the hair. They pour water into glasses, and then pour it out on each other. Water begins as a gentle rain falling from above. It flows as a shallow river gradually revealed that the dancers can swim in. By the end of the show, the rain has become an overwhelming torrent that drenches everything, including a vast boulder that looks as though it could outlast time itself. But as we know, water outlasts rock. And the emotions represented by all this water are somehow greater and longer lasting than the humans pushed and pulled by them.

It is inevitable that the dancers get wet. Nevertheless, they take an often childlike delight in the experience of being drenched—and drenching each other—that develops into a full scale water fight by the end of the show. And Pina Bausch focuses our attention on the way in which water changes the bodies that come into contact with it, and the costumes the dancers are wearing. Water ebbs and flows and we are caught up in the crazy beauty of it all.

What differentiates Vollmond from the earlier Nelken and its field of carnations, is that while carnations can be trampled and the dance space reclaimed for the dancers that inhabit it, the space here cannot. The dancers can only find ways to negotiate around and on that boulder, and in and on that water. The dance is this space is technically dangerous, and the dancers must navigate with care. It’s a fitting metaphor for the emotions that love—and full moons—produce. There is something deeply authentic about watching dancers play and struggle under the blazing lights that echo days and nights passing in a variety of seasons.

Vollmond is a less layered and ironic a show than Nelken perhaps, but it still demands the full attention of the audience. It is a piece focused on pairs of dancers, and long solos. Only once does the company assemble on stage for a moment in which all the dancers move in unison. With the music of Amon Tobin, the Balanescu Quartet, Cat Power, Carl Craig, June Miyake, Magyar Posse, Nenad Jelíc, René Aubry, and Tom Waits, the sound is as eclectic as its dance. An evening with Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal is an exhilarating experience, even if your imagination and your emotions go into overload and you end up as exhausted as the dancers. Unmissable.

FARM FATALE

Queen Elizabeth Hall

★★★

“if you’re up for a slightly trippy, truly unforgettable night of theatre, you’re in the right place”

FARM FATALE

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank

Reviewed on 15th May 2026

by Hannah Bothelton

Photography by Martin Argyroglo

FARM FATALE

FARM FATALE

FARM FATALE

VOLLMOND

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★★

“an exhilarating experience”

VOLLMOND

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 14th February 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Martin Argyroglo

Recently reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

VOLLMOND

VOLLMOND

VOLLMOND

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