Everything Theatre Reviews, interviews and news for theatre lovers, London and beyond

Pros: Powerful physical performance Cons: The relentlessly punishing choreography feels pointless at times On a thrust stage, performer Markéta Vacovská pushes herself to her physical limits as she explores the intensity of a boxer’s experience. Whirring limbs become a blur as she punches to the point of exhaustion. At other times she appears to be receiving the blows, shaking her head from side to side repeatedly before reeling backwards and landing sprawled on the floor. Vacovská’s strength and stamina are ...

Pros: Elegant, clever, playful choreography. Cons: Only thirty minutes long – perfect for the fringe, belongs in a joint billing elsewhere. Choreographer Roy Assaf’s open, flexible style of working has resulted in a confident collaboration with National Dance Company Wales which shimmers from within like a well-cut diamond. A brief 30 minutes long, the piece probes at our desire to create meaning, which might easily result in something vague and pretentious elsewhere but is approached here with light-hearted clarity. A ...

Pros: Arresting images and dark humour. Cons: A clown in existential crisis inevitably produces a show light on belly laughs.~ For the first half an hour I was baffled. I’ll admit that I had been expecting more of a twinkly eyed, red nosed, falling-over kind of clown. This was a challenging work with striking visual images, but some of the staging was shabby and it didn’t hang together well. Russian actor Adasinsky’s company Derevo (it means tree) made their Fringe ...

Pros: Charming, hilarious clowns, who also happen to be virtuoso musicians. Cons: The section with the projection didn’t work well, and made the energy drop. The children in the audience are part of what makes a clown show, and this performance featured the rambunctious laughter of a little boy somewhere at the back, whose timing was perfect and brought the house down twice. The five clowns of Netherlands-based Wëreldbänd reacted with ready charm; in fact, the audience was part of ...

A joyful and lovely piece on the poignant subject of memory, but pacing is unbearably slow at times.

Thirty-five minutes of exhilarating, passionate dancing which makes a powerful statement.

A meditative work with interesting moments and some strong images.

A fascinating piece full of startling images. Intelligent and rigorously trained performers are compelling to watch, but the themes are bleak and difficult to grasp at times.

World class contemporary dance brimming with wit, verve, and originality.

A peerless piece of physical theatre. Set, lighting, and live music integrate perfectly with a performance of formidable emotional power.