The Coming Storm

Synopsis

Forced Entertainment, the UK's most celebrated pioneers of experimental theatre, have been turning theatre upside down and confronting audiences' expectations for over a quarter of a century. In their latest tour de force, The Coming Storm, they turn their attention to narrative - deconstructing and reconstructing something like a ghost story to test the limits of the form. Employing devices from amateur dramatics, puppet theatre, song and na?ve dance, they tell an epic story that is resolutely too big for the stage. This unwieldy narrative is absurd, contradictory and might fall apart at any moment as it is overwritten, reshaped and cannibalised. In a style as inventive as it is clumsy, wrong-headed theatrical tricks take their place alongside broken dances, live music (featured for the first time in the group's work) and increasingly frantic attempts to illustrate their blackly comic and haunting tale.

Our Review:

21 June 2012

A piano is rapidly spun around in circles and then used as a prop in a mock hanging; a pile of driftwood is awkwardly carried by a man pretending to be in a forest while another player dresses in an absurd crocodile costume. This is standard fare for the long-standing experimental group Forced Entertainment who have brought their unique and frenetic The Coming Storm back from the continent and straight into the Battersea Arts Centre.

Six performers (Robin Arthur, Phil Hayes, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor) wrestle over one microphone and the chance to tell their own anecdotes. The authenticity of storytelling and plot is instantly put into question by Terry who opens with a laundry list of what “makes a good story”. But Forced Entertainment - as ever under the stewardship of Tim Etchells - are determined to stunt the development of these anecdotes before their audience can get a sense of an over-arching plot.

A...

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