How I learned to love performance art

There are those of you who will think I am raving but I just wanted to admit to you all that actually, I love performance art/ conceptual performance/ surreal theatre or whatever you want to call it.

Now OK I don't think I'm ever going to want to go and see Franco B bleeding all over the floor or Carolee Schneemann pulling scrolls out of her lady garden. But I love going to scratch events like Show Us Yer Bits (curated by GetInTheBackOfTheVan) which I went to last week because my friends Sedated by a Brick were performing a first peek at some of their new work.

Sedated By A Brick presented some really poetic work which reminded me a bit of doing Burglers at school (remember that? "What have the vandals done with my sandals?") They need to do some work to combine their new work with language with the impressive physical work they have done before but I think they will work this out and create something strong and affecting if not particularly comprehensible.

Next up was Sarah Bell who presented a really cute piece about her revisiting a film about the moon landings which she loved as a child when she wanted to be an astronaut. I thought this was very affective because it made me feel awe and wonder about men landing on the moon which I don't really feel normally. It also had loads of room for her to explore further the ideas about forgotten childhood dreams, nostalgia and media.

Lastly we saw a very funny piece by tatty-del exploring their competitive/bitchy relationship with each other. I thought this was an honest piece which I found very authentic. Some of the scenarios they played out I recognised from my own relationships with my family and female friends which made me think about myself and how I interact with people.

So an enjoyable evening all round. If you're still sceptical about going to see any theatre that doesn't have a playwright's name on the poster, here are a few reasons to give an alternative type of theatre a try.

1) If you enjoy surreal comedy like the Boosh or Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy there is no reason to assume you won't enjoy a similarly weird experience in a theatre.

2) I've had a depressingly large number of people in work and on dates ask me what my star sign is recently. Obviously people who 'believe' in star signs either are really stupid, want you to think they are really stupid, or have cunningly turned their brains off in order to avoid dealing with large difficult questions and help them to reduce the world to small manageable chunks. This is a talent I find both dangerous and enviable. If, like me, you occasionally find yourself so choked with the surrounding stupidity it is hard to breathe, I guarantee you will find some challenging theatre created by people who are really doing something with their brains very refreshing.

3) People who make this kind of theatre are lovely people who want to know what you think. You might expect them to be arrogant, annoying, North-London-Hipster type people and ok some of them are. But the majority in my experience are crafting their work to communicate with the audience member in the most effective way possible. They are far more open to suggestions and constructive criticism that any other type of artist, playwright or musician that I have ever met.

4) Don't knock it until you've tried it. I took my friend Faye to see DV8 a few years ago, nervous that she would hate it and think I was mental. She turned to me when the lights went up and said 'That was the most amazing thing I have ever seen.' Now we regularly go and check out contemporary physical theatre/dance productions at Sadlers Wells and elsewhere and have had many more amazing evenings.

5) Nothing will ever make you sound more impressive at dinner parties than up-to-date knowledge of cutting-edge theatre.

I'm not saying you will like everything you see. Some of it is pretentious twaddle which will leave you cold. But I could also say that of many Shakespeare adaptations.

Thanks to Rob for coming with me to Show Us Yer Bits. I think he enjoyed it.

52 - Aladdin, Ashcroft theatre, Croydon

52 plays!! I realise this might lose impact as I am blogging a few days after seeing this last production of 2011 on New Year's Eve. But believe me dear reader, I saw this (and The Borrowers) in December 2011. Which makes my challenge complete.

I was pleased to see a panto as my final play. You might think a panto is slightly less worthy than some of the other plays I have seen over the year. You are wrong. Pantomime is the greatest example of British culture I know.

Try seeing a Pantomime outside of the UK and you will run into problems. Then try explaining Pantomime to a German, an American, an Indian and witness the look of bemusement.

To me the clever puns, cross-dressing, colour and nonsense you see in a pantomime demonstrate the wit, diversity, exuberance and eccentricity that make up our national identity.

Look back in time and you can find the pantomime's ancestors in mummer's plays and even mystery plays. Look forward and find its children in modern films like Shrek (people think the idea of having innuendo and cultural references for the grown-ups in children's films is new. I'd say American cinema is just catching up.) Naturally as a leftie British person I usually treat patriotism as an embarrassing and rather dangerous disease but actually I do think that our literary and cultural heritage is something we can be proud of.

Now usually I'd advocate forgetting the celebs and patronising the smallest local pantomime you can find for maximum community feeling and naughtiness. But I did think this Aladdin was particularly good in terms of sheer volume of cheesy jokes. My favourite:
"I just saw Michael J. Fox down the garden centre"
"How did you recognise him?"
"He had his back to the fuchsias"

I also thought the set was lovely and glittery, the dancing impressive and the actors full of the essential energy and mirth. Wishy Washy (played by that geeky new bloke from Hollyoaks) was the star of the show, interacting really well with the kids, delivering exposition at roughly the speed of sound and jumping around the stage like a mad thing.

Something I would have liked to see improved somewhat would be the costumes. Pantomime dame costumes can be really magnificent and silly and although Twanky's were colourful I thought they could have been slightly more inventive and daft. The exception to this was the cool ming vase dress 'she' wore in the finale complete with a hat that looked like a lid so she could shrug her shoulders and draw her head in to make her head disappear. That was awesome.


I feel a bit sad now my 52 plays resolution is complete. Obviously I'd like to go to the theatre a lot in 2012 too, but with a new resolution to save some money and go on holiday to India I suspect my theatre trips might become less frequent. When I see something particularly great or awful, I'll definitely keep posting on this blog, it has been nice to practise writing down my thoughts and ideas.

Anyone considering upping their experiences in 2012, I can't recommend the 52 plays idea enough. I can honestly say it is one of the best things I have ever done. I feel like I know much more about theatre than I did 12 months ago, I see plays in a wider context and have a far better idea of what kind of theatre I really love. Instead of setting yourself the usual dull dieting or sporty challenge this year, why not embark on something that will improve your mind instead of your body? Watch 52 films, see 52 plays, read 30 books (52 books seems a bit much to me), go on 52 dates, whatever. Choose something you are passionate about and learn more about the thing that you love.

Above all my lovely blog readers, I hope you find a way to have a happy, constructive and successful new year. Noone else can make this happen but you.

51 - The Borrowers, Nuffield Theatre, Southampton

The Borrowers was everywhere this Christmas, bemusing as the last I heard of it was when I read the books and watched the BBC series as a child. Daisy says it's because people our age who enjoyed the old BBC series have grown up and had children of their own and want them to enjoy The Borrowers too. Surely some mistake as I am FAR TOO YOUNG for anything I liked as a child to have come full circle. *Resolutely ignores 1980s revival*.

I liked the new adaptation on the TV this Christmas, but for me there was a lot more magic to be found in this theatre production. For one thing, they kept the story set in the 1950s which made it much more nostalgic, and for another it was live theatre which is always that bit more magical than the TV.

I wanted to see The Borrowers because it struck me as a great challenge to produce on stage, what with half the characters being a few inches tall. This production tackled this brilliantly, with tiny puppets and oversized props. One of the most magical moments came as we saw on one size of the stage the fully sized human boy passing dolls furniture into a small hole in the floorboards which simultaneously in another area of the stage Pod, Arietty and Homily received from above fully sized versions and arranged them in their home.

Other favourite moments included the wasp who appeared much larger than the Borrowers and darted around the stage in a very waspish manner by wearing those bouncy leg stilt things like paralympic runners wear (no-one in my office can agree on what these are called). Lunging at them with a large curly sting he held in one hand he was both fearsome and comical, the ideal children's theatre monster.

I also loved the giant boot the borrowers hid inside, the set really was incredibly impressive.

There were a couple of oddities about this production, one being that the gardener, played by an excellently hammy older actor, was constantly referred to as a young boy by the other characters. We were not sure whether this was a combination of creative casting and lazy script editing or a joke that none of the audience seemed to get.

The other strange thing was the half songs the characters occasionally started but didn't finish. When Arietty started singing at the beginning I thought 'great, it's a musical' but then after a few lines she stopped and continued acting as if the song hadn't happened. This happened a couple of times and left me a bit bemused.

Despite these occasional moments of strangeness this was a triumph of clever stage craft and a charming and Christmassy family show. I hope other companies are brave enough to take on The Borrowers for future Christmas productions.

50 - The Collaborators, National Theatre

This is transferring from the Cottesloe to the Olivier (the larger theatre in The National) and is well worth a trip to see. Go on, go and see a new play. It's by John Hodge (screenwriter of Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, The Beach).

I was surprised by how funny and surreal this play was, considering the content (in Moscow, 1938, writer Mikhail Bulgakov (Alex Jennings) is commissioned to write a play about Stalin to commemorate his 60th birthday).

The play is also more subtle than I expected. Yes, it has something to say about art controlled by the state. But it's also a skilful portrait of an artist who gets lost in his work.

It is worth seeing this just for the amazing darkly comic performance of Simon Russell Beale as Stalin. Initially affable and light hearted he offers to write scenes of Bulgakov's play for him, but in exchange Bulgakov should take over some of his own work; signing papers and making decisions. Things spiral into a nightmare as Bulgakov unwittingly agrees and inspires Stalin to commit more and more terrible atrocities on the people of Russia.

Go and see this, particularly if you enjoyed Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at the beginning of 2010 which was on a similar topic and was stunningly brilliant. And, of course, the White Guard in July 2010 which I missed because I am an idiot.

47 - 13, National Theatre

I was very excited to see 13 because Earthquakes in London was one of my favourite plays of last year. However 13 did not quite have the emotional punch of Earthquakes. I think this was because Earthquakes concentrated on presenting a terrifying view of climate change, confronting us with a selfish present and a dystopian future that was very close to the bone. 13 on the other hand tried to represent a much wider issue of belief and apathy in today's society. Although the points about whether we can change our world in a big way or whether it is best to compromise to affect the changes we can were interesting, the issues were a bit too broad and therefore lacked impact. I didn't really like the way religious faith was associated with demanding political change through protest because I don't see a link between those things in real life people.

It was slightly unsatisfying to watch the idealist and symbol of hope in the play be confronted with the harsh reality. His protest, a result of his speeches in Hyde Park going viral on YouTube, arrives at Westminster and he is granted a meeting with the Prime minister. The PM is a popular liberal conservative who also happens to be the mother of his friend who died as a result of a drunken stunt a couple of years previously.

The resulting negotiations are too complicated for the audience to choose a side, these issues are not black and white. But while that might be very realistic, it doesn't make for the most satisfying play to watch.

What did make the play great to watch were the sparkling snappy clever dialogue you'd expect from Mike Bartlett and the colourful realistic characters who you just had to empathise with. The overarching metaphor of peeking inside the box was brilliantly realised with an enormous revolving box which made up the set in the first half which the characters would act around and inside. I felt a bit bereft when this box was removed in the interval because I liked it so much.

The touches of London that crept onto the stage made the production feel very contemporary, at one point a Barclays bike whizzed across the stage. However the play's claim to be set in a slightly alternative London where strange things happen did not make sense to me. There was nothing explicitly supernatural going on, many of the characters and events were certainly bizarre, like the brilliant old lady playing and singing a Rhianna song on the piano. But the real London is full of bizarre characters doing funny things, so the only reason to set the play in "a dark and magical landscape, a London both familiar and strange" was so the play could portray a realistic London but include a Prime Minister, US envoy etc without satirising real people. I thought this was a bit of a cop-out for the playwright.

Reading this post back, it seems a little negative. I actually loved this play, it was funny and deep and engaging and contemporary. I'm being a bit hard on it because I loved Earthqakes so much. And this is not quite as brilliant as Earthquakes.

44 - Some Like It Hip Hop, ZooNation at the Peacock Thetare London

I know I say this every time I see some good contemporary dance but seriously, how do these people move like that? I'm supposedly the same species as them and I can't get off the sofa in a graceful manner!

This is just awesome, this show. It is funny, has a wholesome positive message without being annoying and the dance moves are simply incredible.

The storyline is not unlike a fairytale, you go away feeling happy and warm inside. I was also frankly intensely relieved to see modern hiphop music and dance in a show promoting gender equality. In a genre dominated by men who refer to women as bitches and hos and women who think wearing a bikini, oiling up and draping themselves over a car in a music video making blow job faces is somehow not degrading to them and every woman who buys their single, this was a breath of fresh air. Yes I sound like my mum and I don't care, if I had kids and found them watching Transformers and dancing to Rhianna I would burn the offending DVDs with my blow torch.

I digress, and I don't want to make the show sound like some kind of morality lesson as you might be put off and not go and see it. There were a lot of school groups in to see this but it was also a highly enjoyable night out with the girls. Basically I lack the dance knowledge to write a proper review of this show so I'll just stick to THIS IS AWESOME GO SEE IT and post a video.

43 - Sweeney Todd, Chichester Festival Theatre

I love Sweeney Todd, Tim Burton's film is one of my favourite DVDs. But I didn't really appreciate the powerful operatic music until I saw this production. And for me to appreciate music in a production is quite a feat as I am severely musically challenged.

This truly spectacular production is transferring to the West End shortly and I would urge you to see it. It is grand in every way, the set is a behemoth of complexity, complete with a working barber's chair with trap door leading to a lower level where Mrs Lovett prepares her gruesome pies in an enormous roaring oven. The music is beautiful, the dialogue sparkles, the blood splatters all over the place and for fans of dark comedy there are more laughs than a Nighty Night Christmas special.

Imelda Staunton plays a hilarious Mrs Lovett, her rendition of Try The Priest with Michael Ball is a highlight of the show.

Michael Ball really exceeded my expectations, resisting the urge towards camp which the role can lean towards, he was brooding and menacing providing the perfect contrast to the exuberant Staunton. I suspect I won't quite see him in the same way ever again.

Look out for Peter Polycarpou as Beedle Bamford too, he was excellent and really make me giggle.

If I had a criticism of this production it would be of the decision to set it in the early 20th century. I mean, when you go to see Sweeney Todd you do want to see grimy Victorian London and I felt a bit cheated by the more modern dress and neon-lit pie shop. It was a bit like going to see Oliver! only to find it set in the 1980s. I don't feel like this added much to the production and don't think it necessary to chance the setting merely to hammer home a message that corruption and down-trodden working classes still exist today.

41 - Legally Blonde at Savoy Theatre

Legally blonde is pure fun. I might have had to supress a feminist wince at some lyrics but it's all very tongue in cheek and the little dogs and dramatic sparkly set pieces made this a spectacle well worth seeing. I was just a little sorry not to have seen Sheriden Smith as Elle Woods as I suspect she would have been brilliant, but Carley Stenson did a grat job. Don't let all the pink fool you, this is a witty and clever musical, perfect for a girls night out.

36 - Peer Gynt, Theatre Collection at the Lord Stanley in Camden

Theatre Collection use physical theatre and dance in a bare studio space to tell the story of Ibsen's Peer Gynt like a fairy tale. There was some skilful physical theatre, the highlight for me was when all the actors came together to create the Troll king, simple techniques like using another actor's hands as his own meant the central figure was able to represent an otherworldly creature in a really effective way.

I also loved the dark comedy when Peer came across what appeared to be an asylum in Egypt. Sebastian Canciglia as the raving Egyptian introducing the madmen was brilliantly comic and disturbing.

There was scarcely much of Ibsen's epic play remaining which meant that from the start the piece was very fast-paced. This meant that as I didn't know the play very well I felt a little confused about what the bigger questions of the text were and what it was saying. After seeing Ibsen's Emporer and Galilean at The National where you come away thinking about the human condition, religion and our place in the world, I found it a little difficult to adjust to taking Peer Gynt more as a simple fairy tale. However as the play is very narrative and there was a narrator figure guiding us through the plot was not difficult to follow.

The fast pace made the play into a series of strange visions, rather like being in someone else's dream which was complemented by the live music and interesting instruments the cast used. This was really clever and helped create the traditional story telling atmosphere.

There was also some lovely singing particularly the refrain from Nicola Fox playing Peer's love Solveig who waits for him and grows old as he travels the world.

Oliver Hollis-Leick played Peer Gynt very convincingly both as a young and impulsive dreamer and later as a more reflective older man. His charismatic and naive charm made him the ideal central fairytale hero, which was in ironic contrast to his flawed actions.

Don't go to see this to see Ibsen, go to see a slice of traditional skilful storytelling and you will enjoy it immensely.

35 - The Tempest, Haymarket

This was an enjoyable production but unfortunately my enjoyment was marred by 3 things. Firstly the seat in the balcony were ridiculously tiny and uncomfortable. Secondly Ariel and his the other spirits were camp rather than androgenous which I found a bit annoying. Thirdly I just didn't think the production was as effective as the Old Vic's last year which had a simplicity that this production lacked.

Oh I also thought Caliban was not savage or alien enough. When Caliban is too human, and played by the only black man on stage, the play just feels vaguely racist.

34- Top Girls, Trafalgar Studio Theatre

Caryl Churchill is one of my favourite playwrights and family and friends were raving about this after seeing it in Chichester so I was thrilled that it transferred to London.

When I watch one of Churhill's plays I feel like she is saying something important and complicated. She doesn't just tell us a story to illustrate a point, she explores a theme, condenses and distils it and presents it to us whole.

Feminism and female roles in society were given this treatment in Top Girls. I felt heart broken after watching it. Surely there is a way to be beautiful and successful, live in London and be a socialist? Can a woman be successful without sacrificing everything else? It is disturbing to recognise yourself in two characters who are in direct conflict with each other but that's what I felt when watching Marlene and Joyce argue.

The play condemns the impact Thatcherism had on feminism in the 1980s. Like Japanese knotweed it poisoned the feminist movement rebranding it as misguided hippy nonsense. I can still feel the impact of this today, particularly in the workplace. Women replaced women's rights with the rights of the individual and the toughest, like Marlene, fought their way upwards in masculine shoulder pads sacrificing family life, relationships on the way. When they reach the top they look down crowing that if they can do it, anyone can. And those that can't are stupid and lazy. Joyce points out to Marlene that her daughter Angie, who Joyce has raised for her, is stupid and lazy "What about her?" But as Marlene coldly points out to her work colleagues when Angie turns up at her workplace "She's not going to make it."


This post isn't really a review of the production but I'd like to say that it is excellent and brilliant and you should go. Suranne Jones in particular is a vastly underrated actor because she was so funny on Coronation street but she is a chameleon and played Marlene brilliantly.

33- Macbeth, directed by MaryClare O'Neill, Hiraeth, Upstairs at The Gatehouse

This was a gutsy production from a promising new company.

Set in the tenth century I expected a simple traditional production of Macbeth. Muddy medieval costumes, sad Scottish singing and red stained glass window reflections projected on the floor made the production very atmospheric. However there were many unusual innovations in this production which I really appreciated.

When Zoé Ford first came on stage I immediately thought she was great but too young for the part. Then Macbeth (Kazeem Tosin Amore) entered and the chemistry between them was palpable. They were a very natural couple, her younger and cajoling, him indulgent. Then after the murder when Macbeth started to unravel and Lady Macbeth tried to calm him down he struck her across the face. The violence in the relationship made for an unusual spin on the play which I really enjoyed, this was the first production I’ve ever seen where I felt sorry for Lady Macbeth. In the sleepwalking scene she hit herself around the face and cowered away on ‘no more of that my lord.’ She was a Frankenstein Lady Macbeth, creator of a monster she couldn’t control.

Kazeen Tosin Amore was magnetic as Macbeth, his unease while others were on stage and sudden movements to anger made his speeches riveting. As he was losing his mind in the scene with Banquo's ghost, the clever use of faceless masks made us all feel like we were with him in this cloud of madness and confusion. I also particularly enjoyed his speech about the ghostly dagger, represented as a sharp beam of light which fell across his face giving him a ghoulish appearance.

Gemma Barrett, Christina Lazaro and Julia Faulkner were just the witches you hope you will see when you go to Macbeth. Drooling mad women working seamlessly as a trio, repeating lines and murmuring chants as if crazily muttering to themselves. They were both disturbing and comic, gruesome and sympathetic. The scene where they conjure visions of the future to a blind Macbeth was particularly well done, with Barrett going into a gory labour and madly lamenting as the bundle she bears is handed to Macbeth who unravels it to reveal a cluster of twigs. This strong image continued to resonate in the next scene in which Barrett gave a very moving performance as a spirited Lady Macduff, struggling against her murderers as they smash her baby’s head open in front of her. Her howls of despair were brilliantly haunting.

I would have liked to see a bit more anguish like this from Macduff and the others after Duncan’s murder but earlier in the play the men were very much the soldiers and retained their stiff upper lips. Dan Mullins was a compelling Macduff, I liked the way he clearly disliked and suspected Macbeth right from the beginning, and his reaction on hearing about the murder of his family was very moving.

There were some strange decisions in this production which I didn’t think quite worked. Banquo’s son Fleance was cut completely. This meant the aftermath of Banquo’s murder, which usually feels like a failure for Macbeth felt more like a triumph because he had seemingly managed to stop Banquo’s line and defeat the prophecy about Banqo’s sons inheriting the throne. Not having any mention of Banquo’s children also meant the authority of the witches suddenly felt a bit shaky.

Another part of the play I thought was a bit strange was the blocking in the battle scene. Macduff was sitting down on some steps as he wondered where Macbeth was and when Macbeth entered he left his sword in its sheath even while Macduff ran at him to attack him. I was so bemused by this strange behaviour on the battlefield it distracted me a bit from the action.

The play was cut to end on Macbeth’s death, which I found much more poignant than ending with the drab final lines about being crowned at scone. Overall a very accomplished and varied production. I shall look out for future productions from Hiraeth.

32 - Emperor and Galilean at the National

This play filled me with awe. It is awesome.

Ibsen tells the epic tale of emperor Julian, who struggles with his Christian faith and decides to overthrow his uncle as Emperor and return Rome to paganism.

Although an epic, this tragic Faustian tale is focussed on the internal struggle and destruction of one man. Andrew Scott gave a magnificently varied performance as Julian. A brilliantly rounded character he went from being a sad confused young man who we felt sorry for, to a mad tyrant blinding his friends and leading his soldiers to death. Watching him you recognise world leaders from the news, but you also recognise aspects of yourself. It was at times uncomfortable to watch but very realistic.

The use of projections of modern soldiers, helicopters and guns combined with the modern dress with hints at Roman armour gave the production a timeless quality. We could spot parallels with modern events but the play still felt like a classic tragedy.

A spectacular set with levels rising from the floor added to the grand scale of this production. I particularly liked an enormous gold ingot (representing the sun) hanging from the ceiling in Julian's palace which turned round for the next scene at the church to reveal the other side which was painted like a rock with a cross on it.

It is a brilliant play that makes you reconsider human relationships with each other and with their gods. And this is the UK première - a great Ibsen play and no-one has seen it before! I felt awe-struck and privileged to see it.

30 - Doctor Faustus, The Globe

I have had an emotional connection to this play for a rather long time. For one thing, I remember a great school production when I was young, and a great English teacher teaching us the play at GCSE level. I later helped a friend who had missed a lot of college put on a stripped down version of the play so she could still get a great mark for the drama assessment she had missed. Then during the heady summer before heading off to university I was an extra in a fantastic professional production at Chichester Festival Theatre where I, naturally, fell in love with Sam West who played Faustus. It is irretrievably linked in my brain with happy times.

Doctor Faustus also connects with me on an academic level. It is the culmination of centuries of medieval mystery plays evolving from a celebration of religious dogma into a play written purely for entertainment by an alleged anarchist. Doctor Faustus isn't a mystery play of course, but when you watch it you can feel the mystery plays behind it, like looking at a child's face and seeing both his parents at the same time. I got my first 1st at university for a prompt book I wrote for a hypothetical planned production of Doctor Faustus, complete with little pop-up set design.

Just as well then that my sister Daisy, another Faustus fan, and I enjoyed this production immensely. I think if I saw a poor production of Doctor Faustus it would be like watching someone stamp on a kitten.

In this production at The Globe it was all about the comedy. Even the dramatic conjuring scene and the close in which Faustus is dragged to hell were funny, with Faustus failing to light candles with great comic timing. I was surprised by this as, particularly at a midnight showing, I expected more of a creepy atmosphere. At times I did think this detracted from the more powerful sections of the play, those bits we think were most likely written by Marlowe. Likes like "O soul, be changed into little water-drops, And fall into the ocean ne'er be found" tend to lose their power a bit when the demons entering to carry Faustus away are quite cartoonish and enter after the bow for a comical dance with bloodied puppet babies.

Having the comedy bleed such a lot into the more serious scenes meant the play felt a lot more complete, rather than a disjointed bundle of slapstick scenes sandwiched between a powerfully tragic beginning and end. Paul Hilton played a very physical and comical Faustus rather than a lyrical and wordy one and this was a production that concentrated on the spectacle of the play over the language.

And the spectacle was truly magnificent. Ghostly aristocrats in white masks danced obscene dances, Mephistopheles and Faustus rode on giant skeletal dragons, books erupted into flame and Faustus was decapitated on stage, only for his removed head to start chatting away and leap back onto his body. Every minute there was something new and clever going on. Pearce Quigley's deadpan delivery for Robin was truly hilarious from the minute he emerged on stage and started urinating against a pillar.

It was half way through the production when I realised Mephistopheles was Arthur Darvill of Rory-from-Doctor-Who fame. He was really excellent, not super villain evil all the time but charismatic and tortured as Mephistopheles should be. Amongst all the energy and comedy it was Darvill who managed to retain the power of some of the real gut-wrenching lines of the play. I went from feeling a terrible sympathy for Mephistopheles "why this is Hell, nor am I out of it" to hating him for deceiving Faustus and leading him to his downfall "I do confess it Faustus and rejoice." Of course I have now developed a crush on Arthur Darvill which should make watching post-Tennant Doctor Who more interesting.

This might not have been the greatest production I have seen so far this year, but I think it is the one I have most totally fallen in love with. There is a hole in my heart where this production should be. I want to watch it again. I want it on DVD so I can watch it every night before I go to sleep. Is it a bit weird to be in love with a play and develop a life-long crush on any actor who performs brilliantly in it? Never mind, yard tickets at The Globe are a fiver people, go go go go go.

29 - Political Mother, Hofesh Shechter at Sadler's Wells

More contemporary dance! I loved this from the minute it started, with violists and cellists in spotlights playing a classical refrain, suddenly joined lit up on a level above them by electric guitarists and men playing the largest drums I have ever seen. The music was loud, like being at a rock concert and the atmosphere electric.

A series of scenes were presented with dancers presenting joyful and bleak communities by turns and a Stalin-esque dictator sometimes seen on the upper level with the electric guitarists shouting incomprehensible angry speeches into a microphone which added to the music to give a feeling of control.

The overall feel of the piece was that of a political epic, like watching Brecht but with rock music. It was stirring and fascinating.

The choreography was, even to my untrained eye, very impressive. I just can't understand how they know where and when to stand, rushing to different areas of the stage and all the time moving as an ensemble like a machine.

I would have liked to see some variation in the style of dance between the different scenes. Not because it became monotonous but because as they seemed to be showing different political regimes I would have thought that was an opportunity to show a variety of different styles or dance moves. Maybe that would have distracted from the overall build up and unity of the piece though.

There was a well-deserved standing ovation at the end of this first night at Sadlers Wells. Definitly one to see.

25 - Much Ado About Nothing, Wyndhams Theatre

Having spent 6 hours on the booking line trying to get tickets to see David Tennant's Hamlet last year with no success, I was ridiculously excited to get seats to see him and Catherine Tate in Much Ado.

Judging by the audience reactions I wasn't the only one a little bit in love with David Tennant. From the minute he arrived on stage driving a golf buggy, his every word was met with cheers. I thought, that's going to get annoying. However the fans calmed down after a while and we were able to enjoy the play.

And we really did enjoy it. The production is set in gibratar in the 1980's and was full of great culture references from rubix cubes to massive speakers. They occasioanlly were a bit gimmicky but really created the atmosphere.

The best scene in the play came when the men and women split up to go out for a hen night, and stag do before the wedding. It's difficult to create the amosphere of a club on stage but this production really capturd it. The set rotated to reveal scenes from both nights out in turn, from women dancing around their handbags to the men getting lap dances from a stripper culminating in the scene where Don John's leitenant has sex with margaret up against the wall in an alleyway. This graphic representation of a scene which is traditionally left off stage made it easier to sympathise with Claudio, because Margaret was wearing Hero's veil it was very easy to see how he was deceived.

Catherine Tate was very well cast as Beatrice. At times she reverted to comedy faces we recognised from her TV impressions and she did look like a TV actor placed on stage. However her character was believeable, the way she rcited the verse was very accesible and funny and I felt like she held her own.

David Tennant though is a great stage actor. I was prepared to feel a bit sorry for the other actors, particularly those playing Hero and Claudio. But actually it wasn't that they were not famous, they actually didn't have as much stage presence as Tennant.

This was a great production for capturing atmosphere. As well as the night club, there was also the wedding scene, which opened with the chairs being set up and a child just running excitedly round the room. Simple touches like this projected the image of 'family wedding' and made you feel it instantly, a bit like watching a John Lewis advert.

The watchmen were hilarious and really cracked us up. The final great touch was the music: Shakesperian song lyrics set to 80's pop style tunes. Watching the actors dance to 'hey nonny nonny' with Adam Ant dance moves was a joy.

24 - London Road, National Theatre

I don't have a lot of time to write a review of this performance so here's a rushed one!

I was really lucky to get a last minute return ticket for this as it seems to be sold out forever and no wonder. It's so refreshing to see something unlike anything I've seen before. London Road is a musical but one presented entirely by a chorus without any specific main characters. The lyrics and all the lines are spoken in that very specific way of talking that a next door neighbour uses when you point a local news camera at them.

It's clever, funny and surprisingly for a production about prostitutes murdered in Ipswich, uplifting. That's because it's not really about the prostitutes who only feature briefly or the murderer Steve Wright who we don't see at all. It's about a very English community bonding over a tragedy, discovering pride they didn't know they had for their area until people on the news started calling it a red light district.

The songs feature catchy refrains including 'Everyone is very very nervous and very uncertain of everything, basically' or 'I've got 17 hanging baskets in this back garden believe it or not' or 'You automatically think 'it could be him' yeah, I'm just gonna, like, cry.' They are by turns hilarious and unsettling.

The characters that emerge are not stereotypes, but they are as recognisable as if they were. They are the bloke next door who dropped your post round, or that woman who Gordon Brown called a bigot on TV. The audience warms to them because they are so clearly people they know, even though we're not told any of their back story or even their names (until a few of them, right at the end when they are announced as the winners of a gardening competition.)

I thought the production would show an overly optimistic view of a community banding together, but it didn't. Some of the community were pleased that the murders had at least driven the prostitutes from the end of their road. Some of them enjoyed seeing their house on TV and followed the trial as if it were a soap opera. As their road is shut off by police, most quickly begin to feel more inconvenienced than shocked or depressed. The whole play is very real, and offers a snapshot into human existence. I love it.

Here's an interview with the playwright:

22 - Most Drink in Secret, FellSwoop at The Spring

Daisy and I took a bit of a risk and took my little cousin Aiden to see this Checkov adaptation. Checkov is pretty weighty stuff and I didn't want Aiden to be bored. But as this was a young and emerging company I had confidence they would bring something different to The Seagull, and I was right. The performance was fresh, engaging and funny.

This was a three man show with each actor playing 2 or 3 characters. Fiona Mikel was a joy to watch, she differentiated the characters without making them too over the top or stereotypical. Another favourite was Clem Garritty as the hilarious chirpy doctor character who is sleeping with the gloomy Masha.

The introduction of modern music, with characters stepping out of the action and singing into a mic was interesting. I liked the way it broke up the action and added to the atmosphere, the songs were performed beautifully with the other actors playing props as percussion instruments.

I'm not sure the modernisation of the play was entirely successful. I liked that the play had been made into a film and it made it much more believable that Anna would not be sure about how good the final film was even though she was in it having not seen the final cut. However I think more recent political references could have been bought into the conversations about censorship and the arts as sometimes these felt a bit anachronistic where I wasn't sure what was referring to modern Russia and what had simply been taken from The Seagull.

There was great theatricality in the play, the way it looked has clearly been very well blocked and thought out. Clever moments included Garitty holding a drawer to become a chest of drawers, and Fiona Mikel and Bertrand Lesca standing up holding a duvet in front of them and a bedside lamp with the top of it facing the audience, so it was like we were seeing them sleeping in bed from above.

I also liked that they had a live goldfish on stage in a bowl in the centre of the table. It's funny how having a live unpredictable animal on stage, even if it's just a fish, makes a performance seem more spontaneous, lively and keeps the audience rivetted from the start. Particularly after the line 'swear on this fish's life,' I kept glancing back at the fish to check if it was still alive, and thinking how awful it would be if it died during the show.

I'm not entirely sure what the company was hoping to bring to Checkov by adapting it, or whther they wanted to say anything new. Perhaps they were showing that arguments about what is valid as art and what art is for are the same today as they were in 1895. Or perhaps they just borrowed a great story to create an exciting new piece of theatre. Either way this is definately worth a watch, and will transfer to Bristol's Tobacco Factory in June.

21- Project Snowflake by Sasha C. Damjanovski at Brockley Jack Studio Theatre

As Brockley Jack studio theatre is right near James' house we thought it was high time we checked it out and headed over there to see Project Snowflake.

It's a cracking little theatre with friendly front of house, really comfy seats and an eclectic offering, round the back of a nice bar which looked like it served very tasty food.

Project Snowflake is set in an Orwellian future, year 2060. The main characters Martha and Jeremy work in the Creativy Institute a branch of the government where their lives are tightly controlled. If they do not meet their targets at work they risk losing their jobs, and in Martha's case, her 'baby licence.' Unfortunately for Martha and Jeremy, their target is to turn their invention, a dream recorder, into a dream manipulator which will make the wearer have happy dreams.

The play started off really well, with a scene between the two main characters Martha and Jeremy in which Martha says nothing but read out case reports which Jeremy repeats as he types them into an appropriately futuristic looking computer. We see the relationship develop between the two of them as they bicker, flirt and sulk, all without saying anything other than reading the reports. When they do not work quickly enough an alarm goes off, and when Martha goes to make coffee she displays the cups to a wheeled security camera she takes with her at all times. Jeremy has a personal camera too, as do all the employees, it monitors their work progress and every word. This first scene cleverly introduced the characters and situation without clunky exposition and I really enjoyed it.

There were several examples like this of clever writing. My favourite was a very funny argument between two high up executives in the organisation, where they prefaced every insult they threw at each other with a lengthy disclaimer to say the following statement was their personal view and may not represent the views of their company or department.

The plot of the play could have used some more work, it seemed to cop out at the end without showing any real conclusion which left us feeling dissatisfied. There were a couple of confusing holes in the plot: why did Martha and Jeremy go from typing up reports, administrative work, to working in a lab on the dream recorder? Also one smaller character came on stage without a camera on wheels, seemingly because they didn't have enough of them backstage. Maybe there was reasoning behind that but if so I couldn't spot it.

The play was billed as if it would tackle the moral dilemma of whether it is ethical for the government department to control people's dreams. But this was only briefly mentioned and the main focus was the fate of the two main characters should they fail. This meant we were rooting for them to find a way to build the required machine, which I'm not quite sure was what the playwright intended.

Despite there being some aspects of the play that didn't work, there were some great ideas here, and some very engaging performances. Well worth the fringe ticket price.

17 - If Destroyed Still True, Sedated by a Brick at Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol

Sedated by a Brick is a performance company featuring Fraisia Dunn, Neil Puttick and Gareth Mayer, who has been my friend since we were both five. Gareth and I have a long-standing agreement to differ on our views of theatre and performance: Gareth thinks I don’t ‘get’ his kind of contemporary performance and I think no one does and people pretend to ‘get it’ because they are pretentious and anyway can’t we just go and see a nice Shakespeare? In the good natured spirit of this long-standing clash of perspectives I hope he won’t mind me reviewing their latest production from my perspective.

All three members of Sedated by a Brick are talented performers and they have a knack for presenting strong imagery on stage. If Destroyed Still True is a classic example of their style: a collision between theatre and performance art. However I felt that it was just missing the most vital elements of both, and reinstating these would turn it into a more powerful theatrical experience.

Theatre is about telling stories. This performance hinted at a story, but didn’t present us with any characters so we were not emotionally involved enough to care. And there were not quite enough hints for us to piece together a story out of the string of vaguely connected images we were shown.

Performance art on the other hand, and actually I think all art, should be about emoting an emotional response from the person watching it or putting across a message or thought of some kind. When I have seen iconic performance art in the past I have felt strongly afterwards: whether disturbed, upset, amused, drained. Here too I don’t think this performance quite succeeds. Because we didn’t have any context for the events or characters, we didn’t know what was happening and couldn’t derive anything from it. An image I particularly liked involved Gareth breathing into the mouth of an inanimate Fraisia who is lying next to Neil with their necks overlapping. Gareth then compresses Fraisia’s chest and this action inflates Neil’s chest. He compresses Neil’s chest and as he breathes out, Fraisia’s chest inflates again. This action seems to imply Gareth is resurrecting the inanimate figures and bringing them back to life, but this conflicts with what he does shortly afterwards- removing their clothes and wrapping Fraisia, Neil and the clothes in bin liners. This left me confused and with the impression that the performance didn’t actually communicate anything.

In the bar afterwards another member of the audience said it a disdaining tone of voice ‘there were a lot of people laughing in the audience.’ I said ‘yeah, it was funny.’ And at many points it was. Whether developing this piece further or working on their next project, Sedated by a Brick should look hard at the audience’s response and build on it. Organic performance like this can’t be about deciding how the audience should respond to something and then, if they react differently, dismissing them as not intelligent enough. Happily Sedated by a Brick are a company that is interested in the audience’s reaction to their work, to the extent that in the foyer after the performance we were invited to react to it by finishing a basis line drawing of a face which was printed on the back of the programme. These were put up on the wall for everyone to see and added to the mood of creativity among the audience who had just emerged. Conversations about interpreting the piece were flying around the bar and I liked the way the performance had provoked discussion among so many different people.

Sedated by a Brick are a talented and experimental group. By polishing their production and feeding from the audience responses they have provoked I think they will continue to develop and produce divisive and challenging work. Go and see their next production and let me know what you think, I’ll be there.