Best of BE Festival

Best of BE Festival

The Lowry, 14 September 2011

You are given three terrific shows taken from this year’s BE Festival in Birmingham.

Out of the blocks first was ‘Think Fish, Part 1’ from Austrian outfit cie Laroque/Helene Weinzierl.  This was an often rambunctious dance work which incorporated much edge-of-the-seat comedy.

The second work, ‘Tell Me the Truth’, came from French company Autour du Mime and won the Festival‘s Best Performer award.  One could easily see why: it had lyricism, comedy, yearning emotion.  All absorbing, that would be an apt summary.  Love was the topic of the work: love as unbearable torment and bliss, absurd yet poignant.  Apparently inspired by a Prevert poem, it was perfectly realised in performance.

To end, there was ‘El Desierto’ from the UK’s own Move to Stand Theatre Company.  Much more than the other two, this was a narrative work.  Several failed attempts to have a child create fractures in a couple’s relationship.

Besides the excellent theatrical entertainment there was free grub up for grabs in the interval, so you can’t really go wrong with this one.  So go along.  Love.  Eat.  Applaud.

Best of BE Festival is at The Lowry tonight then it moves to Bracknell.  Full tour dates are here.

Translunar Paradise

Translunar Paradise

Written by George Mann

Theatre Ad Infinitum

The Lowry, 9 September 2011

Photo credit: Alex Brenner

An extraordinary work of theatre and an exquisite demonstration of how, sometimes, less is more.

The play uses mime, masks, music and dance to tell the story of a widower pining for his lost love.  His memories are evoked by the dusty contents of a battered, brown-leather suitcase.  She looks on as a spirit and cannot resist the uber temptation to touch him, to show her hand.

What follows is a coming together that is always moving, sometimes humorous and rudely sublime.  Their dancing is by turns affectionate and raucous, elegant veering towards erotic.

When you consider the quaint paucity of materials out of which the play has been made, it is astonishing that it should be so memorable and haunting.  Not only does Translunar Paradise share no little kinship with the silent films of Chaplin and the woodcut novels of Lynd Ward, it is of the same stature.

TranslunarParadise is touring throughout September and October.  You’ll need to scroll down a little bit, but the tour dates can be found here.