Franco Milazzo - Page 2

Getting to grips with what a mute medium like dance is trying to convey is never easy even when there is a recognisable concept like Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal.

In the week when an Arts Council England report lambasted the current state of opera and questioned its relevance to wider society, Charles Court Opera’s The Barber Of Seville stands as a stern rebuff to those who consider this art form to be dated and irrelevant.

With a live rendition of the Oscar-winning score by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and the Philharmonia Chorus, the latest in the Royal Albert Hall’s “films in concert” series brings the The Lord of the Rings epic fantasy saga to a majestic conclusion.

Like some latter day Phileas Fogg, immersive dining specialists Gingerline’s revival of The Grand Expedition leads us on a merry virtual journey around the world all while sat in a hot air balloon gondola.

Opera is not short of stories where women are violated and abandoned by the men in their lives but Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa is an especially cruel tale.

Puddles Pity Party returns to Soho Theatre after almost a decade away.

Operating from the former Café de Paris, dinner-cabaret experience Lio London is coming up to its first anniversary and is celebrating with its latest show Besos, Beats and Beauties.

With an eclectic programme including an immersive dreamscape, an intense two-hander and a revolutionary footstomper, the Ballet national de Marseille present a six-pack of impressive dance pieces.

Through the lens of three households living in Sheffield’s Park Hill housing estate, Chris Bush examines family and politics in modern Britain.

Looking at their impressive longevity and sheer depravity, Lessons In Nihilism’s combination of musical trio The Tiger Lillies and drag’s philosopher king David Hoyle is an almost inevitable team up, the only surprise being that it hasn’t happened before.

The cruel world of drama schools is examined at close range in Spider, written and directed by Jude Benning and currently playing at Riverside Studios as part of their Bitesize Festival.

Appearing down in the Barbican’s Pit theatre as the final part of this year’s MimeLondon, This & That from Phil Soltanoff and Steven Wendt is an oblique and often frustrating hour of shadow puppetry and animation.

Flying in from the States for her eighth time at Soho Theatre, Seattle-based performer Dina Martin debuts her new show Sub-Standards. It takes some skill to straddle performance art, clowning, drag and stand-up with skill and wit but she never looks uncomfortable. And nor should she with her considerable pedigree and following.

On its West End debut, The Addams Family musical makes the most of its graveyard humour and kooky characters, even if the star casting is questionable.

Appearing as part of their Festival of New Choreography, the Royal Ballet have partnered with the National Ballet of Canada for Dark With Excessive Bright, an extraordinarily intimate experiment which allows audience to experience the art form in a radical way.

Considering their recent losses, physical theatre giants Spymonkey would have been justified to adapt a Greek tragedy rather than a comedy. The death of Stephan Kreiss in 2021 and the departure of Petra Massey to Las Vegas now leaves only Toby Park and Aitor Bassauri remaining.

Performed for the first time outside Spain, El Patio Teatro’s Entrañas asks two simple questions: what does it mean to be a human, and what does it mean to be human? The deceptively simple title roughly translates as “Insides” and obfuscates the intellectual and emotional breadth and depth of this stunningly innovative work. 

Even with its scenes of torture, sexual extortion, execution and suicide, this thirteenth revival of Jonathan Kent’s take on Tosca digs deep into the romantic story at its heart.

The UK can’t claim too many music groups with the impressive longevity or sheer depravity of Fascinating Aïda. Celebrating forty years of dropping jaws with a set of songs that still amuse, shock and titillate, they return for yet another tour up and down the country. 

Filled with a couple of operas’ worth of tragedy, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles is not the likeliest source of inspiration for a dramatic circus show but Ockham's Razor are here to prove us wrong.