The Coming Storm (GB)
Forced Entertainment at its best!
Directed by Tim Etchells / Forced Entertainment
In this performance, Forced Entertainment tangle and cross-cut multiple stories to make a compelling and unstable performance. From love and death to sex and laundry, from shipwrecks to falling snow, personal anecdotes rub shoulders with imaginary movies, and half-remembered novels bump into distorted fairytales.
Using a method as inventive as it is absurd, six performers create, collaborate, ambush and disrupt this epic saga that is resolutely too big for the stage. The result is comical, contradictory and poignant; full of wrong-headed tricks, broken dances, sleazy drum interruptions and perfunctory piano accompaniment. Everything builds and everything shimmers. Everything teeters and everything trembles. Everything is reshaped and everything is cannibalised.
The Coming Storm is Forced Entertainment at its best – trademark black humour, a collage of arresting images and an anarchic performance style.
Co-produced by PACT Zollverein Essen, Festival d’Avignon Avignon, Theaterhaus Gessneralle Zurich, Tanzquartier Wien Vienna, Les Spectacles Vivants – Centre Pompidou Paris, Festival d’Automne à Paris Paris, LIFT London, Battersea Arts Centre London and Sheffield City Council.
Performers: Robin Arthur, Phil Hayes, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor.
Director: Tim Etchells. Design: Richard Lowdon. Lighting Design: Nigel Edwards. Music: Phil Hayes / Forced Entertainment. Music Consultant: John Avery. Director’s Assistant: Hester Chillingworth.