Sweet Disorder

A rather good bit of theatre.

So off I go to the Barbican, and the tremendously sunny afternoon and my lazy saunter from Old Street only adds to the delight I feel stepping into the theatre. Somehow, people, smells, air, time and space seem the same in this kind of building all over the world. For me, it theatres are almost second homes - my mom (who is an actress) continually dragged both my sister and me to countless shows, of all kinds, from opera to Afrikaans Shakespeare, Fugard and Berkov. If we weren’t watching them we were in them, or hanging around during her rehearsals. Racing up and down corridors, milling about in the canteen or simply sliding down some rather conveniently sloped marble banisters. Luckily, I reveled in it and still do.

The Barbican is a wierd sort of building, I foresee getting lost and so ask a friendly looking chap where to find the Pit Theatre. Floating walkways hover overhead and they remind me of street highways, but instead of speeding cars, theatre goers zoom here and there, all off to experience some world or another. That’s something divine about theatre; it takes you on a real-time journey. Films are recorded long before you bear witness and have been fiddled with for months on end and by numerous editors. Sitting down in the theatre what you see is the ultimate, it’s a performance no one else will see again. Obviously many will see a similar rendition, but never that one. The play was great - Kristin Fredricksson managed to keep a the large space completely inhabited throughout and, well, I shed a tear, I had a laugh, I loved it. If you wish to read my review, just click on that attractive looking header up there.