mon 02/12/2024

Brighton Festival

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Brighton Festival 2023 review - Gabriel Garcia Marquez in a creative retelling

Brighton Festival has a knack for choosing children’s theatre that is in equal measure as magical and captivating as it is simple and easy to understand. It’s an equation that means both adults and children alike can be sure to have an experience...

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Gravity & Other Myths: Out of Chaos, Brighton Festival 2023 review - eye-boggling acrobatics

With acrobatics at this level, they make it all look so easy, it’s possible for an audience to become complacent. By the time the show Out of Chaos, by the troupe Gravity & Other Myths, from Adelaide, Australia, has finished, the Brighton Dome...

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Jah Wobble, Brighton Festival 2023 review - Coronation bank hol Sunday marathon

Jah Jah Jah blah blah blah. We’ll get to that.I meet Everest at Worthing station at 3.20pm. He’s clad in a light brown corduroy jacket and a cap. He looks dapper. Like a Len Deighton spy. We board the train to Brighton. I hand him a chilled bottle...

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Sacre, Circa Contemporary Circus, Brighton Festival review - an astonishing assortment of lifts and throws, daring and strength

Sacre isn’t your average big-top show. Created by Brisbane-based company Circa, this is modern circus meets contemporary dance – a conceptual deconstruction of the traditional experience, represented in a show of impressive strength, with real...

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I Get Knocked Down, Brighton Festival review - Chumbawamba singer's film is lively, funny and thought-provoking

One effect of the film I Get Knocked Down, a playfully constructed journey around the life of Chumbawamba vocalist Dunstan Bruce, is to remind that socio-political rage was once woven into the fabric of popular music. Old footage from the band’s...

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The Patient Gloria, Brighton Festival review - an electric exploration of the control and manipulation of women

The psychology of female desire in 1960s California, was a field awash with voyeurism and exploitation. This brilliant play uncovers not only the bizarre story of Gloria Szymanski, but catholic hypocrisy and everyday sexism too, with a nod to third...

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Josie Long, Brighton Festival 2021 review - giddy post-lockdown spin on pregnancy-based show

Introduced by Brighton Festival 2021 Guest Director, poet Lemn Sissay, Josie Long, clad in blue denim dungarees and a black tee-shirt, initially hits the stage for a celebratory introduction. She’s here to perform her Tender show about pregnancy and...

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Live is Alive!, Brighton Festival 2021 review - local talent makes for snappy return to gig-land

The idea live music is back is worth shouting about. Indeed, the BBC News has been doing just that about this gig. In reality, though, while it’s a joy to be out (this is my first major venue concert for a year-and-a-half), Live is Alive is a...

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Points of Departure, Brighton Festival 2021 review - Ray Lee's harbour-based sound art impresses

They stand in a row, nine of them, in a long, strange corridor between rows of stacked, palleted, planked wood and the red brick wall of an endless warehouse. Nine tripods, each two humans high, with a spinning helicopter head, double-ended by...

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Brighton Festival 2020 launches with Guest Director Lemn Sissay

This morning the largest annual, curated multi-arts festival in England launched and announced its programme of events. With Guest Director, British and Ethiopian poet-playwright-broadcaster Lemn Sissay, MBE, at the helm, Brighton Festival 2020 is...

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Neneh Cherry, Brighton Festival 2019 review – beloved bohemian

Neneh Cherry’s matchless bohemian life has perversely secured her pop position. The crowd tonight is maybe three-quarters female, and as unconcerned by a setlist almost wholly drawn from new album Broken Politics as Cherry is by the long lacuna in...

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Berlin: True Copy, Brighton Festival 2019 review - tricksy forgery masterclass

This brilliantly conceived and executed show is about provenance in art. It’s also about our perceptions of the truth. However, it’s a show where it would be churlish to reveal too much of what goes on. This is, of course, perverse since some will...

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