Brighton Festival 2010 Digest

Brighton Festival has a rich theatrical offer this year for the cultural connoisseur. 

Continuing the Festival’s admirable commitment to commissioning interesting site-specific work in unusual locations around Brighton, local company Dreamthinkspeak will this year take over the abandoned Co-op department store on London Road to present Before I Sleep, their re-telling of Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. Dreamthinkspeak have forged a reputation for themselves in Brighton with various shows – their first production Don’t Look Back was presented at Stanmer House in 2003, and they also premiered their Dostoyevsky inspired Underground at the Brighton Theatre Royal in 2005. Dreamthinkspeak are known for the beautiful journeys they take the audience on around unlikely buildings – and you can guarantee that the scenery and set-dressing in  Before I Sleep will be works of art. Recently Dreamthinkspeak have been overtaken in the public eye by companies such as Punchdrunk, whose Masque of the Red Death became a runaway success during its extended run at the BAC - howeverthey were really the pioneers of this type of work and the pieces they create are somehow more subtle and thoughtful than the work of other companies operating in this field.

Marine Parade pairs innovative theatre Animalink with one of the country's hottest writing talents Simon Stephens responsible for last year's Edinburgh Festival hit Pornography. A musical about life, love and relationships against the backdrop of Brighton this sounds like the perfect project for Festival audiences. The inclusion of some musical theatre is also a welcome breath of sea air.

Lone Twin, one of the country's leading purveyors of experimental theatre bring the last instalment of their acclaimed Catastrophe Trilogy to Brighton Festival after a successful run at the Barbican. A show that struggles with 'the mad and magnificent catastrophe of living' told with music and song.

Tim Crouch is a multi-award winning playwright and performer whose show England was the treat of the  2007 Edinburgh Festival. I, Malvolio continues the series of plays where Tim Crouch re-imagines a Shakespeare play from the perspective of a minor character – in this case Malvolio from Twelfth Night. All the shows have been commissioned by Brighton Festival and are all about making Shakespeare accessible to school children – the website has a large educational resource for teachers. Touted to be a funny and rude look at the classic tale through the eyes of the wronged steward, there are even ‘uncut’ shows for adults some evenings during the festival.

Park Life is the culmination of a series of workshops run by NoFit State Circus during the final week  of the festival. For this week, the innovative circus company are setting up an acrobatic playground on The Level in Brighton and inviting ordinary people to ‘run away to the circus’ - even if only for short time. There will be a series of events ranging from bicycle ballets to live music jams, which will finish in a grand finale, showcasing the fruits of the workshops and also some of NoFit state’s professional performances. This will take place at 8pm on The Level on the 23rd May, and if their big-top show Tabu was anything to go by, this company are full of talent and Park Life will be well worth a look.

 

9. Best Before

- Rimini Protokol - 19th - 23rd May Sallis Benney Theatre

Last year's Rimini Protokol's Breaking News, a documentary-theatre hybrid divided audiences. Firstly Best Before is an English language piece, it also sounds all the more playful with each of the 200 audience members being given a games controller and asked to take part in a theatrical virtual world.