★★★★☆ Non-conformists everywhere, here is a show dedicated to you! . . . The RSC have recently gone into collaboration with Intel to produce high-end computer generated graphics to enhance their latest production of The Tempest. Carpet and Llewellyn prove that a cardboard box, a hand-written sign and an antique keyboard can make just as effective theatre. It’s the storytelling that counts.
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★★★★☆ The puppetry in this piece was fantastic and there is probably no other way of showing a man compulsively eating anything he can get hold of and then regurgitating some of it. Freaks are of course of intense fascination to the general public and of great scientific interest to doctors.
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★★★☆☆ Hanging off this Dahl-like story is a sentimental sub-plot about the loveless life of inventor and widower, Caractacus Potts (Jason Manford), whose children are keen to get him set up with a surrogate mum in the shape of Truly Scrumptious (another Fleming named female along lines of Pussy Galore and Kissy Suzuki).
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★★★★★ Following successful seasons in London and Bristol Pink Mist returns to BOV before embarking on a UK tour. Authentic voices resound throughout the piece, testament to Owen Sheers’ interviews with returning servicemen and their families. His crisp dynamic verse is complemented by precision stylised movement as it takes us from a homespun Bristol with numerous local references to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.
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★★★★☆ Fred is intrepid. He wants to be like everyone else, just a regular sort of guy. In this he is exhorted by the show’s director, Ben Pettitt-Wade, to “be his own puppet”. But being made of fabric and stuffing, and well, just being a puppet, makes attempting a ‘normal’ life pretty tricky.
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★★★★☆ Two actors, a spectre, a handful of characters, a few bits of saggy curtains, an old theatrical skip, a bentwood chair, a clothes rail and a lot of dust – but those are not the important ingredients. The most important ingredient, and the one we supply ourselves, is imagination.
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