Award-Winning Everything Comes to Barbican

Everything Must Go – or The Voluntary Attempt to Overcome Unnecessary Obstacles (to give it its full title), is a father/daughter collaboration written by Kristen Fredricksson which tells the life of her late father Karl using a host of media from cinefilm to puppetry.

Originally conceived when her father was still alive, and intended to be acted as a duet, Kristen and Karl first performed the piece together. Months before they were due to perform at the Fringe, Karl passed away but Kristin decided to carry on alone in what is billed as “a beautiful labour of love.”

Everything Must Go details the life of Kristen’s father from his very conception (“a drunken meeting between a Swedish sea captain and an Irish girl who tap-dances”) to his final waking moments. As Kristen explores this extraordinary life the audience follows Karl from his days as a young athlete, training for the Olympics by day and dressing up to the nines by night, to the less glamourous later years of old age and depression.

Although not an actor, Karl was part of the 100-strong community cast in Deborah Warner’s production of Julius Caesar at the Barbican in 2005. Kristin trained with Jacques Lecoq in the mid 1990s and has since worked as a performer and theatre-maker principally in France, Portugal and Japan. Everything Must Go‘s development was supported by barbicanbite10, the University of Kent and Theatre Royal Margate.

The tour also visits: The Junction, Cambridge (2 May);

The Castle, Wellingborough (5 May);

Caravan, Brighton Festival (10 May);

Tobacco Factory, Bristol (Mayfest, 13-15 May);

The Arches, Glasgow (18-19 May);

Carriageworks, Leeds (21 May);

Ruhrfestspiele, Recklinghausen, Germany (26-30 May);

Theatre Royal Margate (3 June);

New Wolsey Theatre Ipswich (Pulse Festival, 5 June);

Theatre Royal, Bath (11-12 June); and the

West End Centre, Aldershot (30 June).

– by Tom Williams