1927's multimedia Golem impresses at Young Vic

Mark Valencia
WhatsOnStage
★★★★★

To describe Golem as five people and a video screen would be like calling Chekhov a hack or Nijinsky a hoofer. This satirical entertainment… raises computerised interaction to an art form. Andrade's theme may be on the hackneyed side… but her treatment of it is startlingly original. It's Kafka meets Little Shop of Horrors… Five deft performers achieve extraordinary levels of detail and never miss a beat in 90 minutes of carefully choreographed interplay with Paul Barritt's dazzling animations… Rose Robinson and Esme Appleton as the women in Robert's life present an array of impeccably defined characters, while Lillian Henley supplies a rich complementary score… At the heart of it all is Shamira Turner as Robert… She is magnificent… Once it's over, your head spins with a thousand images…

Michael Billington
Guardian
★★★

For all the show's visual bravura, I felt the law of diminishing returns begin to set in… As in the previous show, Paul Barritt’s animation is a source of constant delight. The original golem, a squat figure with a pendulous penis, is wittily drawn. Barritt also captures, with a nod to Terry Gilliam, the raffish squalor of an urban landscape in which bog-standard restaurants coexist with clip joints and sex parlours. The five actors effortlessly merge with the animation and acquire their own distinct personalities… The show is undeniably clever. It just never seems sure what precisely it is satirising… But even if the show lacks focus, it is full of treasurable individual moments…

Fiona Mountford
Evening Standard
★★★★★

For a long time Punchdrunk held the title, but it's theirs no longer: 1927 is officially the sexiest theatre company in town… Book for this show and the future of theatre, or at least one strand of it, will be revealed in all its glory. Golem, with its theme of machine’s increasing dictatorship over man, is a quiet but astringent satire on our lonely, technology-obsessed age, yet that is only part of the show’s appeal. The aesthetic of the piece, written and directed by Suzanne Andrade and with animation and design by Paul Barritt, is singular, winning and endlessly inventive… The precision with which the actors synchronise with the animation is an unending delight, and there’s atmospheric music provided by Lillian Henley on the piano. See Golem, and marvel.

Dominic Cavendish
Daily Telegraph
★★★★★

…this visually astonishing, intellectually invigorating show… A witty collision of knowingly antiquated aesthetics, wide-ranging cultural influences and modern-day sensibilities, the 90-minute show takes a direct satirical swipe at the iPad generation but it always feels as though you’re being tickled into looking at the world anew rather than having your knuckles rapped. The story has a child’s picture-book simplicity… Such is the finesse of the operation, though, that it’s as if flesh-and-blood characters are part and parcel of a two-dimensional urban landscape, while the animations are so detailed and tightly synchronised, they could be pushing out of the screen… My 13-year-old son, who's rarely to be found off-line, was absolutely hooked.

The Times
★★★★★

This funny, unsettling and unforgettable satire from the theatre company 1927 is a Frankenstein for the 21st century… they use their own unique mix of live action and animation, eerie and genteel, of modern settings and antiquated English accents to depict the creeping contemporary convergence between man and machine. Mixing the human (five performers, in whiteface) with the mechanical (Barrit’s cartoon backdrops), they soon make you forget there is any distinction between the two… Golem is too alive with irony, imagination and humanity to prod you in the chest with its agenda… The ordinary and the fantastical, the live and the animated are immaculately synced. The attention to detail is adorable throughout… the arrival of 1927’s third show sees this innovative London company fine-tune to perfection its blend of form and content.