Barbican BITE '09

Barbican BITE '09

27 July, 2009
by: John Ellingsworth

Only one theatre season offers the slightly queasy prospect of watching a show called Caesarean Section in a venue called The Pit: the Barbican have just released the full juicy details of their autumn BITE programme, which kicks off in September.

As usual, they've put together a far-reaching and intrepid schedule of strange theatre – with no item more tantalising than Raoul, the new solo by James Thiérrée, grandson of Charlie Chaplin and North Star of circus. Dream narratives and dreamscapes are extremely debased in physical theatre – both by practitioners and critics, who use them to grout the cracks in the dramaturgical or intellectual tiling. But it really is true to say that a Thiérrée show proceeds like a dream – things that cannot or should not happen, happen, and in an absolute, unquestioned reality that connects deeply to universal thoughts and emotions. Really the only difference is you'll never forget it.

Another import, and coming to the UK for the first time, Polish Teatr Zar are very much representative of that country's theatrical subculture of rigorous physical training, superlong development and rehearsal periods, and intense Jerzy Grotowski worship. If you've ever seen the more widely travelled and (in this country) more prominent Pieśń Kozła (Song of the Goat), then you'll know what to expect: ritual movement and choral song delivered by a tight ensemble of mesomorphic performers operating as one organic theatrical unit. Their Barbican offering is actually a triptych of pieces, each developed through research into a different national tradition of polyphonic song: Georgian, Bulgarian, Greek; Corsican, Bulgarian, Romanian, Icelandic and Chechen; Byzantine and Sardinian. One section is staged in the Pit and the other two in St Giles', a medieval church secreted somewhere on the Barbican estate. All three pieces will be lamentations, as these things usually are.

Something else to flag is the new show by Slung Low: I'm not sure my fragile sense of personal safety could withstand the buffeting, but stronger souls may want to book a slot for They Only Come at Night: Visions, a promenade performance in the Barbican's car park that plays on the pervasive urban night-terror of hidden murderers (who we all know are especially drawn, possibly by inner voices, to covered and multi-storey car parks). Slung Low's last performance was the Oxford Samuel Etcetera Award-winner, Helium, which reportedly was very gentle and lovely, and is revealed now as merely a lure to pull in the audiences for this harrowing second round.

Also in the BITE line-up: Cabaret Simon, the first cabaret-style show developed for children (ages 4-10); a six-hour elision of three Shakespeare tragedies by Dutch company Toneelgroep Amsterdam; Boy Blue Entertainment's Pied Piper, a 'modern' and 'edgy' retelling of the folktale in which the rats are replaced by hoodies with ASBOs (pretty much the only bite show that isn't quickening my pulse – but who knows); and Architecting by The Team, a multi-generational epic which sounds very much like the stage equivalent of a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Buy your tickets with excitement and no delay.

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John Ellingsworth