Bristol
The Odyssey, Mark Bruce Company, Circomedia, BristolSaturday, 13 February 2016
Mark Bruce did very well with his last dance theatre production Dracula, but this time around he has reached a little too far. The Odyssey is a great text, but with the twists and turns of Ulysses’ return to Ithaca, burdened with the karmic debt of... Read more... |
CD: Tricky – Tricky Presents Skilled MechanicsThursday, 21 January 2016
Tricky navigates a kind of penumbra, a fertile and ever-renewing source of inspiration in which his mixed-race, gender-fluid self can re-invent itself periodically, while staying true to his roots and his unique self-taught take on the world of... Read more... |
Sleeping Beauty, Bristol Old VicTuesday, 15 December 2015
Christmas pantomime is all about letting go, and being carried away on a wave of communal jollity. The genre also delights in carnivalesque gender-bending, the anarchic undermining of authority and the playful representation of evil. There is always... Read more... |
The Crucible, Bristol Old VicFriday, 16 October 2015
Tom Morris has a strong feel for drama that explores the personal implications of fanaticism: his production of John Adams’s powerful opera The Death of Klinghoffer for New York's Met and the ENO, used a language of great simplicity that allowed the... Read more... |
Living Quarters, Tobacco Factory Theatres, BristolFriday, 25 September 2015
Brian Friel’s Living Quarters ranks with his best plays but isn’t well known. This powerful story of family dysfunction was first performed in the UK in 1991, directed by Andrew Hilton for Bristol’s legendary pub theatre company Show of Strength and... Read more... |
We Made It: Cameron BalloonsSunday, 13 September 2015
An air of busy calm greets me as I walk onto the top floor of Bristol’s Cameron Balloon factory. Considering this company is the largest manufacturer of hot air balloons in the world, my novice expectations of behemoth machinery raging back and... Read more... |
CD: Julio Bashmore - Knockin' BootsSaturday, 01 August 2015
“Julio Bashmore” is actually the nom-de-dancefloor of Bristolian DJ-producer Matt Walker who’s been slowly building a rep over the last five years. Outside clubland, music-lovers may have heard of him via his production on Jessie Ware’s early... Read more... |
The School for Scandal, Tobacco Factory, BristolThursday, 16 April 2015
Andrew Hilton’s immensely enjoyable Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory production of the Sheridan classic opens with a display of hilarious brio from Byron Mondahl, who steps into the intimate arena of this South Bristol venue, only half in... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Tobacco Factory, BristolThursday, 26 February 2015
Teen spirit explodes time and time again in the intimate space of Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, with piercing electronic sounds, fierce lighting and a torrent of high-energy movement. The frenetic pace of Baz Luhrman’s film has left its mark on... Read more... |
CD: Roni Size - Take KontrolWednesday, 20 August 2014
Bristolian Roni Size was a leading light among Nineties drum & bass originals. By 1997, like many of his contemporaries, he was feted by the media as an artist about to supernova, to lead pop in wild new directions. It was all very exciting and... Read more... |
Arcadia, Tobacco Factory Theatres, BristolSunday, 06 April 2014
The popularity of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia owes a great deal to the play’s brilliant weave of themes and ideas, outlined by characters from two different historical periods – Romantic and modern. There is breathtaking brio in the way the writer’s... Read more... |
As You Like It, Tobacco Factory, BristolWednesday, 19 February 2014
Andrew Hilton, the creative force that drives the consistently excellent Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, might be playing safe by returning to a play he put originally put on in 2003. But “As You Like It”, for all its light touches, is a... Read more... |
