Miriam Gillinson: co-editor, theatre
From bragging boys to haggard men
Conor McPherson writes plays that feel simple but are tied together with such skill, the themes as delicate as silk, lightly binding everything together but never squeezing too tight.
Gleeful, distilled creativity
The show pulses with the kind of knowing naivete that is now Little Bulb’s trademark. Everything – even the hugely sophisticated and high-end stuff – is performed with a great big twinkle in the eye.
Every twitch, moan and flicker of the eyes
There are no tangible divisions or barriers in Christopher’s world. When he walks about the streets, trying to track down the murderer of the neighbour’s dog, the houses have no walls. Christopher’s world is a without boundaries – or, at least, without divisions that he can easily recognise or understand.
Bloody exposing
But for much of the time, we’re simply badgered and bullied by a number of aggressive types, the threat of execution held – ridiculously – over our heads. It feels silly. It also feels completely out of synch with Kafka’s novel, which doesn’t look death in the eye until the very final moment.
Fill in the gaps
The classic Kneehigh touches - the karaoke sessions, a moon that doubles up as a clock and the spooky cold music that trembles beneath every scene - only make the dialogue sound weaker still. While these kooky visual and aural touches scream out ‘THEATRE’, the dialogue whispers ‘television’.
Gruesome and abstract
This disorientating disconnect between sound and reality lies at the heart of this show. At first, we resist the obvious inconsistencies between what we hear and what we know to be possible. But the 3D soundscape, which is so convincing and so overwhelming, gradually wears us down
No need to shout
Everything becomes grindingly over-explicit, as the ‘austerity’ measures are picked apart by an angry throng. There are a few gems of economic insight in here but it’s really tough to stay engaged.
Brilliantly complex perspectives
When Odysseus and Penelope are finally reunited, the stark black and white set is suddenly flooded with colour. It feels like nothing less than the beginning of a new and better world.
A museum of oddities
Suddenly we expect to be led; for the show to have a beginning, middle and end and for our questions to be answered. Expectations are raised and disappointed.
Dazzling and laughter
Yes, it’s there in the central love story between ‘Katherine’ and ‘Petruchio’ but this musical isn’t really about the love between a man and a woman. It’s about Cole’s love for theatre. As the two gangsters find their groove, their eyes light up. And, when the applause comes, they take endless encores.
The impression of love?
There’s a glorious and typically pertinent scene, when the two escape to a nearby loony asylum. It’s no coincidence that it is here – in this abandoned mad house – that the two patients fall in love. As every good writer will tell us, the line between love and insanity is an absurdly fine one.
A tiny crumb of comfort
It all sounds horribly miserable – but that’s the thing about Beckett, he piles up the despair with such care and such a twinkle that rich humour always glistens between those packed layers of sadness.
Symbols and signifiers
The younger characters feel less textured and more self-conscious. All the boxes are carefully ticked; there’s the posh and self-entitled chap, the sensitive lad and the savvy girl. But when the three banter together it feels too clinical, the manufactured punchlines landing rather heavily.
Cruel anticipation
We begin in a cozy log cabin, where Dominic West’s ‘Man’ is holed up with Miranda Raison’s ‘Woman’. The atmosphere feels odd but that’s mainly down to a strange lack of chemistry. It’s as if these two lovers have just had sex in a fridge.
Man’s futile quest for permanence
The stage hums with meaning, so clear and so urgent you almost want to reach out and shake the characters silly; ‘Look, here you are anew! Here you are in our room and you’re exactly the same! What do you make of your wafty philosophising now, old chum?!’
A horse-drawn carriage?
The actors seem completely out of sorts. On film, Binoche positively bleeds with soul; she’s a subtle, quietly alluring and deeply engaging performer. In this production, she’s experimenting with emotions rather than genuinely channelling them.
Exquisite nuance and boiling, burning impact
Hedda’s journey from a trapped and fiendishly bored wife to a vicious fiend with her claws exposed can be tracked simply through Smith’s smiles. There’s a rainbow of repression in those stretched grins.
Disjunctive, cruel and inconclusive theatre
It’s brilliant to see younger actors read Stephens’ sparse dialogue. Often the apparent sparseness of Stephens’ scripts prompts actors to amp up the emptiness and you’re simply left with nothing. Here, the actors pour their heart and soul into every line, buoyantly happy with one word and hideously depressed the next.
A Nora of extraordinary hidden reserves
When Nora eventually turns against her husband, it’s as if all Morahan’s carefully placed character clues are finally strewn about the stage. All those clever little glimpses into Nora’s soul, laid down by both Morahan and her director Carrie Cracknell, suddenly shine with incredible force.
Pained but resilient
The most effective scenes are the seemingly slight ones – the simple scenes that, almost incidentally, throb with immediate meaning. There are a number of wrenching songs that say far more about Tunisia and its trapped citizens than the rest of the show put together.
‘Horrible, horrible!’
For all the innovations here and some gorgeous, enveloping visuals this is essentially a cerebral experience; a show that gets you thinking but never really wriggles right into your heart. Still, there are some very smart touches, which make Shakespeare’s language fizz in exciting new ways.
One tiny movement
‘This is me,’ he says as he stands, stiff and frightened, at the side of the stage. At the beginning, he crouches whilst he talks. As he grows up – this is coming of age story at heart – he stands upright and speaks strongly.
Money’s impossible grip
McNair kicks of with an impressively lucid narrative on the history of money and the emergence of currency. With a few deft strokes, McNair describes the transition from stone age transactions (‘Who wants this ‘ere carcass?’), to the first discovery of gold and the eventual adoption of paper money.
Their own beautiful mess
Don’t look at the front of the stage, they seem to be screaming silently. Don’t look for the obvious. Maybe, just maybe, if you look beyond the surface, you might get a little closer to understanding us and discovering the truth.
More bewildered than bedazzled
The actor’s painful catharsis feels too much, though, and a gap opens between the audience and the action. This gap widens, as the warped music envelops us and the actors crack up completely, storming around with strange props, including a massive penis, attached to their flailing bodies.
A foghorn of despair
Mandarin is quite a hard-hitting language – packed with monosyllabic words – and the cast’s delivery sounds a little monotonous. It’s hard to make out those elegant swoops, dips and swerves in Shakespeare’s text.
Wispy and blank
It all feels frustratingly and wilfully dry. Bond’s desire to write a highly stylised and starkly symbolic piece has ripped the guts out of his writing. ‘The Under Room’ never throbs with the kind of thick danger that wraps its way around his other, better and meatier plays.
The thumping excitement only theatre can muster
Rain pours from the ceiling. Odd little crucifixes flash up, initially comforting but quickly threatening. Thunder rumbles, lightning flashes and music, outside of Magill’s control, envelops everything. The effects grow bigger, madder and wilder, as Magill loses his grip on his story and his sanity.
Dead inside and deeply frustrated
Many reviews of this show have included the slippy caveat: ‘This is not an easy viewing experience’. This phrase is often slipped in as an afterthought, following a careful exploration of all the cerebral pleasures, to be mined from said misery fest. And yet, what this phrase really means is: most of the audience will not enjoy this.
Permanent psychological damage
Cate Blanchett is an incredible force on stage and the production would be so much less without her. She manages to make her character, Lotte (wearing pastel pink, Alice in Wonderland-themed costumes), both bafflingly innocent and wearingly knowing.
‘There have been fights in here’
Canham prowls, thoughtfully, around the stage, placing scraps of masking tape on the floor and across the walls, as stolen conversations rumble around him. A blueprint of the theatre gradually emerges, breaking up the space into three distinct areas. Now all that is needed, is to colour in between those white lines: that’s where the dancing comes in.
A pathetic little word
Tassos Stevens is a storyteller and, as he narrates the tale of Jimmy wandering across the earth and wondering about human feeling, he uses every opportunity he can to crack open the concept of love and examine its individual parts.
A saggy miracle
The trio - Brian Logan, Alex Murdoch and Neil Haigh - also makes clever, comical use of their own limitations. Often, the most pathetic, ant-climatic lines are the funniest. It is the pause, as an actor attempts to summon up a sharp quip and finds himself wanting, that creates the biggest laughs
An air of premeditation
Eve Best is the one free spirit in this over-marshalled production. She enters in a celestial glow of light but, once released from this formal introduction, is utterly her own creation. Spirited and strikingly ‘normal’, her Duchess of Malfi would make sense in any production.
Less anger, more power
This might sound horrifically cheesy, but Charlie’s decision to save Sammy a Penguin bar says much more about the sacrifices that lovers make for each other, than any of those drug-fuelled face-offs.
London town in all its technicolour gore and glory
The complexity and stretch of Sondheim’s score is breathtaking. Not a second, or a voice or a single utterance is left to float free from the music. Instead, every ‘yum’, as Mrs Lovett’s customers dig into their fleshy pies, is thread into the music. Every swoon is a note. Every scream becomes a chord.
A thundering noise and a jolt of light
Olivia Poulet, as royally messed up mother Lyn, is incredibly hostile but occasionally tender. She might snap her son’s pencils but she also ruffles his hair, affectionately, when he carries on regardless. Simon Lenagan digs even deeper with his role, even if does initially appear a solid and straightforward father.
Private revelries
There’s no doubt this audience-focused approach allows for some overwhelmingly effective moments - particularly when one longs, with such a fierce terror, for the darkness to end. Nevertheless, this focus on the spectators’ senses also creates a slightly selfish and adrift audience.
Hanging out with the lads
Ishy Din is not your usual Royal Court Programme playwright and has, in his time, worked in video shops and restaurants and driven mini cabs. This unusual background shows. Although Ishy Din’s straightforward plotting might lack the tricksy ambition of a more polished writer, this is a playwright with a natural ear for dialogue, alternately comic and touching, and an instinctive feel for emotional arcs.
‘What would you say defines Essex?’
While the arrival of Shelley and Tom does provoke important debate, with ex Captain of Industry Ken growling at delicate, writer Tom – ‘Why do you think we’re apathetic?’ - it is bare and blatant discussion. The play becomes a platform rather than a stage.
Absurdly amusing kisses
Tovey and Winstone’s characters look like they long to be elsewhere. Tovey’s eyes dart about anxiously, constantly searching for something or someone else. Grace’s screeching laughter is far from a thing of a joy. And, even when the two kiss, it feels like they’re grappling about for a connection they cannot find.
A deliciously grotesque musical medley
A puppet with a penis for a head lurches, lazily, towards Punch. It’s an absurd image, like a Dali painting that’s learned to walk, but it is affecting and frightening too. Puppets might not have souls but, by God, do some of them look evil.
Landmines for the brain
Bubbling away in this cauldron of emotion and ideas, is the theme of homosexuality and exclusion. I have never before extracted such a concrete idea from one of Ridley’s plays, but this theme is impossible to ignore in Edward Dick’s clear-headed but head-spinning production.
Lost in a deluge of action
Harris throws in just enough sinister hints about this new nanny, and her oddly intimate knowledge of Hazel’s family, to keep these early encounters fizzing nicely. But despite these Ortonesque overtones, the atmosphere gradually flattens and the over-defined characters, with little room to develop, hit a dead end.
Young again
It isn’t only the transformation of this couple’s physical appearance that causes the breath to catch in one’s throat. This switch from sprightly to stumbling is painful enough – but it is the change in the way these two communicate that really impresses.
Naked execution
The world behind these frames is exhilaratingly fluid; tiny body parts flutter through the frames, heads jilt about independent of their bodies, clouds sink and feet jiggle. It’s like going to a Magritte exhibition, whilst hideously drunk, and it’s damn good fun.
Firmly on thin air
At one point, Thierrée brings a grey, paper-thin man to life simply by placing her own arm in his sleeve. ‘They’ talk, grope and dance together. And then, with one slip of her arm, this almost-nothing man is dead again. It’s a strange little scene and and quite frightening too; one lad was crying for his mummy, the night I watched.
Thrillingly nutty
Henry’s infectious incredulity – those massive eyes that role with such relish – emphasises the frantic, unfurling chaos around him. He also takes the edge off what can sometimes seem a cruel play. There’s a flurry of beatings here, as each Antipholus grows increasingly exasperated, but Henry’s fights never sting.
This tiny moment
This camp, Northern son could have turned into a ‘type’ but Billy continually surprises. His love for Dolly Parton, instead of being used as a vehicle for cheap gags, feels earnest and heart-felt: ‘They will look down on Dolly. People do!’
Stuttering and humble
The level of detail just isn’t here and grating inconsistencies emerge. A strong adaptation should bring new meaning to worn-out lines, but Rickson’s show actually renders many lines ridiculous. ‘The Royal bed’, ‘the kingdom contracted in woe’, ‘the war-like state’; all these references point to the awkwardness of the adaptation and, as we flinch, distance us from the production.
Unnatural endings
Shadows loom and smoke swirls, as Bartlett’s chaotic, dystopian vision comes to life. It is more than a little bit frightening. Just what haunts these characters at night? Why do they keep jolting weirdly? And why is a booming voice, which sounds like the Milk Tray lady turned bitter, warning us of sleepless nights?
‘Conflict is amaaaazing’
Amala whispers her words to her companion, who in turns translates. Sadhbh then questions Amala ‘directly’, but her words, again, must be translated by Mathilde. The layers of removal pile up on each other and we begin to understand the supreme effort required to break through these obstructions to communication and discover and disseminate the truth.
Accidents happen
Tiny incidents take on magnificent consequences, acting as a vessel for all that unspoken anger and despair. A lost Radio Times stimulates a blazing row. An ironed shirt takes on an almost divine, diverting importance. A snapped stocking seems like the end of the world.
Short of match fitness
Sport, and football in particular, is becoming a holy-grail for theatre makers. It’s been repeatedly observed that the two have heaps in common; the ritual, the rules, the crowd interaction, the emotional highs and lows. Damn, even the ticket prices. It seems the two are a match made in heaven and yet, time and again, they play poorly together.
Kane without rage
Kane’s plays often have depression buried deep in their core, but this doesn’t call for empty, glazed over-acting. Instead, it requires the type of achingly strained performance that throbs with absence. The best Kane performances pulse with a desire for something more – but Shaw’s Hippolytus seems to welcome the abyss that engulfs him.
Ghosts are replaced with gunfire
A distinctly Chekovian plot seeps through the cracks of this old, 19th century house. The proprietor, Lady Lambroke, has resolved to marry off her daughter, Hannah, and thus save the family from financial ruin. Only, in McPherson’s play, the ghosts and regrets that haunt Chekov’s characters are alive and kicking – or, at least, screaming spookily through the walls.
Naked naivety
Robert Sheehan, with a chest free of hair and a body that seems to big for him, reminds one of Bambi, constantly skidding across ice. He has as little control over his body as he does over his character, which the locals re-model with relish.
A childlike glee
It is the collective wit of this company that sets their show apart - both from other, rather straight-faced experimental shows, and from their own, previous ventures. Humour sparkles everywhere.
Busy and bruising
The play never settles and although the central ‘dream’ scene allows for some more serene reflection, it’s no surprise to learn this segment was interpolated much later on. There are some beautiful whispers of poetry here, as chef Peter urges his mechanised colleagues to think for themselves, but it strains rather than thickens the play proper.
Rock hard gems of truth
Sometimes the families, each confronting unthinkable tragedies, sing in harmony. Often, they clash, with one lonely family member struggling to be heard against her babbling and frightened relations. The timbre of Tucker Green’s dialogue is so expressive that one imagines, were the words to be removed completely, the meaning would remain.
Disappointingly grounded
Sure, he flies about a lot but the strings are always on display. Ariel’s songs are delivered in a strange falsetto and the effect is not spooky but embarrassing. It is a bit like watching a kitten sing.
All about excess
As Johnny surveys the mess he has created, he comments with characteristic understatement, ‘This is getting awkward.’ It is when the show undermines the epic scale of Mozart’s piece that it actually feels strongest. Other undercutting works less well. So, as Blake merges in his R&B and dubstep beats, the cast is left to valiantly fly Mozart’s flag above this stream of sound.
‘You learn not to say anything’
This idea of the duplicitous life a successful woman must lead is exacerbated by Churchill’s extensive use of doubling. Most actresses play three roles and, as the actors make their relentless transformations, we recognise this is the same ‘performance’ most women undertake every day.
A spooky gloss
Terry Doe is a real and exciting talent, who could not be generic if he tried. Yet there is a risk of ‘sameness’ in this production as a whole, which is often impressive but occasionally crude. For a piece that examines all manner of racism, it’s a little too black and white.
The executioner’s morbid machine
The fact the script is in Arabic places a particular pressure on the actors’ rhythms and expressions. Hlehel is more musician than actor, spitting out some sections in fierce staccato and savouring other moments with a smoother and lazier delivery. He should be hideous but his loyal respect for the machine makes him hard to hate.
The toad is (damp) toast
Sure, they speak like humans but they’re not, well, human. Why couldn’t Toad do a little more hopping? Why didn’t Mole burrow a few measly holes? Why didn’t Ratty twitch his nose even once?
Glints of darkness and swamping sound
‘Mistreated? I don’t want to hear about it!’ Burt’s otherwise velvety voice takes on a flinty edge and his impatience for human frailty flares up. The crushing impact of a life of one-sided dialogue occasionally escapes this piece and these slips are ugly, interesting moments.
Man-size cats, toilet threesomes and talking washing machines
At the end of Realism, protagonist Stuart’s girlfriend asks: ‘And what did you do today?’ ‘Fuck all,’ replies Stuart. Well, these pictures, scribbled frantically in the dark, tell a different story…
Between the real and unreal
Stanley Kubrick was inspired by this infidelity fantasia, originally a novella, to make his film Eyes Wide Shut. This story, though - obsessed with the fine divide between unconscious desires and conscious action, dreams and reality – seems made for theatre.
Hallucinatory rats, roaming lights and crumbling walls
Julian Barratt, as the corrupt Mayor thrown into chaos by the imminent arrival of the Government Inspector, is not a richly textured actor. He doesn’t feel particularly solid on stage. But what Barratt does do brilliantly is to calmly absorb the increasingly bonkers action on stage – a skill he probably picked up working on the equally mental Mighty Boosh.
Outdoors and beyond
Dominic Cooke is brilliantly tuned to the pressure points in this play and he pitches this wordless fight perfectly. The aching silence which stretches out between this eye-rolling wife and eyes-down husband expresses their irreconcilable differences even more starkly than the crackling confrontation that follows.
Some loopholes are bound to emerge
As each actor watches his or her grandparent ‘perform’, it is moving to witness the old and new remembering together. The pleasure here is in the obscure details these stories unearth; the significance of the tiny things in life, despite the urgent political context in which these recollections unfurl.
Abandoned imaginings
As his audience files into a room in the Arlington restaurant, he meekly insists ‘the show hasn’t started yet’. It has. As he empties the contents of his pockets, Thorpe glibly states, ‘This is just stuff.’ It isn’t.
A little bit of tweaking, a little less streaking
The backdrop is really just a massive ream of paper but the joy is in the freeness of invention, the personal flair of their strange imaginings. It is telling that the screened segments are some of the show’s best moments and perhaps suggests these brave but bonkers performers could be destined for TV sketch comedy.
Theatre more real and technology less fake
Outside the theatre, an alarming array of machines is presented to the audience of one. Some severe-looking goggles are clamped to your face, headphones plonked on your head. It feels odd and disconcerting. Yet, in a matter of minutes, you will forget these objects are there. You will forget where you are completely.
Increasingly inebriated
Despite her contentious concept, which will no doubt frustrate some more sober-minded artistes, Kimmings is actually a charmingly naïve performer. There is something childlike about her unchecked curiosity and slightly slapdash performance style.
A touch too small
The chorus is initially composed entirely of women, who sing Arabic music as they process through the streets. They are mournful, emotional and strong. They suggest a world in which, if only women could sing in harmony more often, their voices might be heard.
Slapdash but rigorous
This might be a simple story but the storytelling is sophisticated and unusual. Summers disappear and friendships are forged in chaotic but fluid montages: the careful rearrangement of chairs, a few choice chords and some speedy costume changes gleefully sketch out the passing of time
Shaking precariously under the weight
No doubt Wallace’s play, which looks at two imprisoned women in 1950s America, reveals some important facts about an unjust justice system. It is also a touch formulaic, however, with characters that feel overdone, and symbolism so thick you could reach out and touch it.
Nature’s variable and awesome power
In those rare moments when The Other jumps off the boat and attempts to moor the raft, his rough interaction with nature – his splashing, tugging and floundering – feels hopeful. It feels like living; dangerous, unpredictable but deeply satisfying and solid.
Between a rock and a soft husband
Myrtle can’t hold her drink that well, Chicken sure as hell can, and Lot is all but useless, since his lungs are about to implode and his mother’s dresses are proving mightily distracting.
A kinder, gentler Hamlet
Joshua McGuire, with his cherubic hair and a smile that reaches to the rafters, radiates charm; one could see the younger spectators moving in to get a closer look. He pulses with naïve optimism and an innate willingness to please.
A suitably curious observer
Perhaps it’s slightly generous to call this a satire. What Chekhov in Hell really is, is a series of brilliantly conceived comic sketches. They are hugely enjoyable and contain some scathing observations but they aren’t anchored closely enough to reality to really touch a nerve. But they sure do hit the funny bone.
Thorns but no rose
Jack Gordon leaps head first into these romantic ‘trips’ and his innocent energy does a good job of grounding Ridley’s quixotic imaginings. It helps that Ridley’s phrases, although exotic and soaring, are so convincingly coined as to make them almost believable: ‘It’s like digging a hole in a sky of meat.’
Distrust and darkness ooze
Despite the exquisite synchronisation of the cast, nothing quite adds up. The strange and oblique images (the visuals often take a side step from the main action) cement the nagging feeling that something is not quite right.
Cruel magic
The opening, as the audience is led by strange, incanting men through cold and shady tunnels, is brilliant. Another man sits above the walkway and snippets of Shakespeare’s prologue waft through the dusty dungeon. Shakespeare is a great one for setting the scene and Belt Up Theatre re-imagine this portentous opening spectacularly well.
At once comforting and grindingly depressing
The redundancy of words shines out in this occasionally self-indulgent but authentic script. Leigh keeps hammering out the same phrases, emphasising the idea that though these characters talk incessantly they rarely communicate. It might be painfully repetitive at moments but it is effective, too.
A show that bleeds invention
Prospero is an old man in dirty clothes, Miranda a slightly wild lass, Trinculo a camp and stranded chap, desperate for comfort. But Caliban is a real monster, with his mouth drooling, his words hideously garbled, his eyes pounding dangerously from his face.
Crystal cruel
Gradually, we have been moving further and further away from nature. So, whilst we begin outside, we end in an underground car park, devoid of natural light. It is a place so deeply hidden that even the planes can’t reach it.
Political righteousness and hormones
The only two voices to rise above the political clamouring are those of the vodka-swilling, crotchety ex-SS soldiers. Director Longhurst teases a glowing chemistry from these two survivors, who drink like demons, compare war wounds and bitch, woefully, about the youth of today.
For the eyes rather than the heart
The only Kneehigh flavouring that adds some spice to this saccharine show is cabaret singer Meow Meow. Resembling a younger and less frightening Liza Minelli (who was present on press night and treated like royalty), Meow Meow plays host for the night.
‘I’m sick at drama!’
This is what really fizzes off the stage in Mogadishu – that endless scrabbling around for truth in those limbo years, when the yearning to be an adult forces you to scratch out your past and, in the worst instances, wipe out your future altogether.
Scampering to be heard
This is what Churchill does so well; she finds a period and a community steeped in tradition and unspoken rules and sets a firework fizzing in its midst. She then creates one exceptional but credible character and uses this anomaly to highlight the cruel rigidity of a particular time in history.
A recreation, a reinterpretation – and certainly not magic
Patrycja Kujawska is enchanting as the scarlet-shod girl, initially liberated and later fettered by her glamorous red shoes. When she first puts on her shoes, she smiles, impish and guilty, like a lady who’s just bolted down a massive Cadbury’s crème egg. She oozes guilty pleasure.
Slithering awkwardly
In Snake in the Grass, the laughs come from slightly stretching the bounds of credibility. Yes, it’s funny that these two sisters are more concerned about their living arrangements than their father’s death – but is it believable?
A blinding light spills out
The actors, given such freedom by director Rufus Norris’ clever approach, invest their roles with abandoned but focused energy. Peter de Jersey, as the sleazy reporter who turns Texas’ finger of blame of Vernon, swaggers around like a serpent, recently gifted legs.
Lots of people tittered
The preoccupation with facts also means the stories feel stretched and the characters, on the whole, perfunctory. It becomes easy to dismiss Greenland as a preachy piece about climate change – something distant and non-threatening – as opposed to a scary and recognisable exploration of something that will affect us all.
Complex conditions
As Dr Taylor is subsumed by her stroke, a flurry of past patients flashes through her consciousness and across the stage. A suspended clothes rack is dropped from above and, with outstretched hands and yearning faces, the actors assume their identities. It feels a bit overdone and many of the flourishes in this show could be flattened slightly – not every second needs to be stylised.
Cadaver carriages
Everyone talks of the heart as our strongest muscle, but here is the proof and it’s almost enough to make one proud. Despite the stubborn grappling from the hand, the relentless twisting and turning, the heart refuses to submit.
