'The Stage'; Face in the Crowd Review
KUDOS, the company of 12 performers and two co-creators – producer Ben Clare and director Matthew Dye – have categorised their piece as physical theatre. And here is finally a generation which has inherited and internalised the DV8 theatre-making ethos and made it their own rather than merely just emulating the recognisable tropes.
However, their piece is dramaturgically and narratively coherent in a way that is uncharacteristic of a lot of contemporary physical theatre and dance.
Each of the 12 members of the titular faceless 'crowd' have a journey that is clear and easily readable by the audience without any abstraction or ambiguity.
In addition, a series of easily recognisable situations from London's every day life – underground trains, streets, offices, gyms, bars and nightclubs – forms a single day cycle and is recreated in astute and highly evocative detail with an excellent sense of originality and humour. All of this definitely makes KUDOS a crowd to watch.
Review by Duska Radosavljevic
Published online at 17:21 on Friday 08 August 2008
KUDOS, the company of 12 performers and two co-creators – producer Ben Clare and director Matthew Dye – have categorised their piece as physical theatre. And here is finally a generation which has inherited and internalised the DV8 theatre-making ethos and made it their own rather than merely just emulating the recognisable tropes.
However, their piece is dramaturgically and narratively coherent in a way that is uncharacteristic of a lot of contemporary physical theatre and dance.
Each of the 12 members of the titular faceless 'crowd' have a journey that is clear and easily readable by the audience without any abstraction or ambiguity.
In addition, a series of easily recognisable situations from London's every day life – underground trains, streets, offices, gyms, bars and nightclubs – forms a single day cycle and is recreated in astute and highly evocative detail with an excellent sense of originality and humour. All of this definitely makes KUDOS a crowd to watch.
Review by Duska Radosavljevic
Published online at 17:21 on Friday 08 August 2008