★★★★☆ The Girl And The Giraffe is a tale of how patience and understanding can be the foundation of true friendship. An adventurous young girl is playing in her garden when she suddenly encounters a giraffe. He is uncommunicative and morose, but she is determined to persuade him to join in her play.
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★★★★☆ Beneath the Blizzard is set in a dystopian future where a raging blizzard keeps humanity hiding deep beneath the surface in a maze of tunnels. There are monstrous snowmen who can ‘swallow somebody whole without even chewing’, resources are low and life is desperately hard. To keep the feeble electric lights flickering the Mayor demands that everyone pedals furiously on generators for long hours.
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Mr Sellman-Leava has in mind the corrosive nature of the tiny cuts, malicious or simply thoughtless, which flow from the labels we apply to ourselves and to others . . . Too agreeable to be a polemic, the overall impression is of a rather slick and entertaining TED talk, but without any resounding ‘aha’. I’m guessing the audience was pretty much onside with much of what was said which was mostly ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ . . .
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The stories told include a romantic reconciliation by way of snobbery, how neighbourly propriety can turn exhaustive and exhausting, and what happens when a lonesome pork pie “holer” tries to be in on the joke with his factory workmates. The latter is the closest to horror the show strays, and its final sequence is hard to shake. It’s one of the better vignettes.
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★★★☆☆ The Record, one of nine pieces 600 Highwaymen have created since 2009, veers towards being a kinetic art installation, brought to life by 40-plus Bristolians of all ages, sizes and backgrounds. Theatre it certainly is too, but with more of an existentialist, minimalist approach that can, at times, be both hallucinatory and mesmerising . . . Strangers on stage, strangers in the audience, we find ourselves contemplating each other as souls looking for connection.
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Extracurricular is a feature which enables us to include items that are perhaps outside our normal remit . . . StageTalk Magazine has always been an enthusiastic devotee of contemporary dance. In the UK we are well served with several outstanding companies but one of the vanguards of modern dance was, perhaps surprisingly, Dutch.
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