Theatre / News
Bristol best of 2015: Theatre
1. The Stick House
The Lo-co Klub, Sep 7-Oct 17
This unique new theatre piece by Bristol collective Raucous fused live performance, film, music, and creative and digital technology. With the help of Bristol’s walkabout circus/theatre aces The Invisible Circus, Raucous transformed the red-brick, arched chambers under Temple Meads station into the Lo-co Klub, setting for a dark fable of love found, betrayals made – and the beast in all of us.
Read the Bristol24/7 review
2. Pink Mist
Bristol Old Vic, July 1-11
A visceral production of Owen Sheers’ verse drama about three Bristol boys returning from service in Afghanistan and struggling to readapt to civvy street. “Despite the horror of war, there’s still a lightness to the script: the lilting rhythm of the verse drama urges us on, and there’s plenty to laugh at too,” enthused our reviewer. “At the heart of it all is a challenge to the audience, to see each individual casualty as having the biggest of consequences.”
Read the Bristol24/7 review
3. Romeo & Juliet
Factory Theatre, Feb 19 Feb-Apr 4
Eclipsing by a hair’s breadth their other brilliant 2015 offering – a joyously camp, technicolour School for Scandal – Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory’s thrilling, visceral R&J was “filled not with sighings and swoonings but with grunts and roars: passionate, full of vivid emotion, shot through with the (blood)lust of youth”.
Read the Bristol24/7 review
4. A Thousand Seasons Past
Outside M Shed, Aug 5-8
This absorbing devised show saw Bristol Old Vic Young Company and Travelling Light teaming up with Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives to explore Wapping Wharf’s colourful history. With a cast of 20 young people, Seasons… examined the site’s eventful and sometimes grisly history from the New Bristol Gaol via the Bristol Riots of 1831 (which saw much of the Gaol demolished) to the harbour’s more recent industrial incarnation.
Read the Bristol24/7 review here
5. Bristol Festival of Puppetry
Tobacco Factory Theatres and elsewhere, Aug 26-Sept 6
Bristol’s brilliant, biennial festival of adventurous, all-ages puppet theatre was on particularly fine form this year, with a packed lineup including the city’s wonderful Pickled Image and Green Ginger; a fantastic new show by the Whalley Range All Stars; a participatory game of Massive Battleships; and the festival’s ever-inspiring carnival on North Street.