“Rising” by Aakash Odedra

at Warwick Arts Centre, Friday 14th June 2013

Aakash Odedra’s Rising is made up of four completely separate solo dance pieces choreographed by four different practitioners which, though they make up a satisfying whole, ought to be considered separately. Though they all feature powerful lighting designs, emotive music and varying levels of engagement with Odedra’s background in Kathak, they each raise important questions as stand-alone pieces.

Nritta – Choreographed by Aakash Odedra

A contemporary take on classical Kathak, ‘Nritta’ has a semi-epic feel within the small space, as Odedra moves around with stunning fluidity.

“Predator (Finishing off what I started when I was five)”

at Warwick Arts Centre, Tuesday 11th June 2013

When I was in middle school studying Shakespeare for the first time, our English teacher used to organise a visit from a man called Anthony Glenn, who came along to create one-man versions of the Bard’s plays by getting us kids to play some of the characters and at certain moments getting the whole audience involved. They are some of my most vivid memories of those plays and I’m pretty sure they contributed fairly heftily to my ongoing obsession with Shakespeare in performance. And yesterday, as I sat on a chair and wielded guns whilst playing the roles of Anna and Hawkins in a recreation of the 1987 action film Predator, I was a child again, although this time the classic was of a rather different nature.

Andy Roberts’ show – the full title of which is Predator (Finishing off what I started when I was five) - is technically a solo affair.

“The Price of Everything” by Daniel Bye

at Warwick Arts Centre, Thursday 6th June 2013

I first experienced Daniel Bye’s The Price of Everything via the Northern Stage at St Stephens live stream during the Edinburgh Fringe last year. Rather than trek for an hour across the city early(ish) in the morning and pay a tenner to sit in a small dark room drinking milk, I instead sat in my own small dark room drinking coffee and watching the show for free. I know I enjoyed the piece because I’ve been talking about it all year and using it as a reference point for some of my own projects, but for some reason I didn’t write about it. And now, after rewatching it live at Warwick Arts Centre as part of the (L)one Festival and chatting to Bye as part of a pre-show discussion, it feels as good a time as any to have a bit of a think about it.

The Price of Everything is marketed as a “performance lecture”, which I’m told was decided upon in order to give the show a sense of “mock-seriousness”

“Flown”

at Warwick Arts Centre, Tuesday 28th May 2013

At the beginning of Pirates of the Carabina’s Flown, a performer asks if anyone from the audience has “any experience of climbing”. There’s an awkward pause followed by a child raising his hand. After said boy is let down gently, a gentleman puts up his arm sheepishly. He finds his way onto the stage and is led off to get kitted up. About ten minutes later, after some impressive ring routines, he returns to help a woman with her flying act, but accidentally rockets too fast up the ladder, causing her to hurtle into a low-hung lighting rig. It’s pretty funny, but in that moment, the illusion is shattered; of course they wouldn’t let a member of the public anywhere near this stuff.

This moment pretty much sums up Flown, a piece sold as circus theatre with a twist: there are plenty of smart ideas and some mind-boggling routines,

“The Seagull” by Anton Chekhov

in a new version by John Donnelly at the Oxford Playhouse, Saturday 25th May 2013

The Seagull: a play which, when first produced, was extraordinarily radical, shifting paradigms around direction and form, but which due to the passage of time has lost some of its raw energy, so that now it’s fairly easy to view it as a conventional play. For all of Konstantin’s ranting about breaking the rules and changing the structure, in 2013 the text itself can often feel like it fails to be different.

Which is perhaps the main reason why Blanche McIntyre’s production for Headlong is so successful.

“Titus Andronicus” by William Shakespeare

at the Swan Theatre, Thursday 23rd May 2013

*Originally written for Exeunt*

On a day when the morning papers all showed images and descriptions of bloodied, violent acts, the RSC’s new production of Titus Andronicus speaks clearly to a society which has a close relationship to violence. This is a play which demonstrates clearly the absurdity behind the eternal truth of violence begetting violence, and has become popular in recent years due to its ability to be simultaneously comic and tragedy, plugging into a cultural psyche which finds it impossible to consider human experience within the confines of simple labels.

In his début at the company, Michael Fentiman directs with a keen flair for imagery, meaning his production sears the pictures created by Shakespeare’s text onto the back of your retinas.

“BigMouth”

at Warwick Arts Centre, Tuesday 21st May 2013

Big actions change the course of history. But as those of us with an interest in theatre know, so too can words. And though theatre is probably seen as the lesser cousin to the big speech in terms of political debate, there is no doubt an inherant theatricality in speechifying. The People (i.e. the audience) watch or listen to The Politician (i.e. the performer) and within that time they are either won or lost. Recently, a tutor of mine suggested that all speeches in Shakespeare could essentially be boiled down to one person persuading someone else. And it’s not much different in all the other places we look.

In BigMouth, SKaGeN theatre from Belgium have created something which speaks to the small scale of the theatre auditorium and the large scale of historical world events.

“The Victorian in the Wall” by Will Adamsdale

at the Royal Court Theatre, Thursday 16th May 2013

*Originally written for Exeunt*

There’s something fitting about the fact that Will Adamsdale’s The Victorian in the Wall, a play which considers, amongst other things, property, middle class-values and the past, is the last play Dominic Cooke scheduled to be produced at the Royal Court, programmed jointly with incoming artistic director Vicky Featherstone. It acts like a Clybourne Park in reverse, a Pain and the Itch gone wrong, or a Jerusalem without the anti-hero. And here’s the thing: it’s all the better for it.

For unlike those structured, verbose pieces, Adamsdale’s play (presented in collaboration with Fuel) is imbued with a real sense of play

“As You Like It” by William Shakespeare

at Shakespeare’s Globe, Friday 10th May 2013

With the two productions of As You Like It I’ve seen in the last few weeks being among the best Shakespearean performances I’ve come across in my short life, the play is very quickly becoming my favourite in the Bard’s canon. Both Maria Aberg’s Glastonbury-style show at the RSC and the Marjanishvili Theatre’s take on the play end in anarchic, messy, blissfully joyous finales which bring smiles when remembering them, encapsulating the capacity for hope within the play itself.

Hailing from Georgia on a triumphant return after the Globe to Globe season last year, one of the most striking things about the Marjanishvili Theatre’s production is its sheer sense of delight.

“Mess” by Caroline Horton

at Warwick Arts Centre, Tuesday 8th May 2013

Around a third of the way through Caroline Horton’s Mess, I realised I’d seen the show during a Triggered scratch night at Warwick Arts Centre last year. The form, tone and set-up had felt familiar since the show started, but I just put that down to both seeing Horton’s You’re Not Like the Other Girl Chrissy two years back and the style just being, well, familiar. Then, however, it clicked, as I figured out that I had seen it before, albeit in a more basic form. Instantly, I remembered loving it back in early 2012. Which perhaps goes some way to explaining why I couldn’t bring myself to love it this time.

Similarly, I’d heard a lot of talk about Mess at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe,