Theatre Souk

The ‘souk’ concept is exciting and well executed: pay £7 to
enter the ‘marketplace’, then barter for tickets to each individual piece of
work.

Upon setting foot in the building, I was invited to take
part in Priceless, an interactive show where the audience
become contestants in a TV gameshow gone bad. The price? £3. I offered £2.
Done. The show doesn’t conclude anywhere near as strongly as it begins, but 20
minutes of being bossed around in this funny and engaging piece
put me in just the right mood for more surprising and inventive theatre.

You’d need to be very clever with your scheduling in order
to squeeze everything in during just one visit to Theatre
Souk, and I didn’t manage to catch every company, but there are a
couple of pieces I’d recommend putting at the top of the ‘to see’
list.

Flabbergast Theatre’s potty-mouthed, Bunraku-style puppets
will make you laugh out loud as they bicker over their chips in Puppet
Poker Pit. On the third floor, Uzbekistan Airways
sees a dissatisfied employee turn his office into a beach scene, and then deal
with the consequences when his boss finds out, while CurvingRoad presents an
extract from Laura Wade’s Breathing Corpses. Both shows
offer sensitive performances, as well as set designs that are impressive in
their commitment and imaginative scope.

And don’t miss Between Life and Nowhere (or The
Stairwell), which takes place on Theatre Delicatessen’s original 1930s
stairwell. This promenade piece offers beautiful, broad brushstrokes on the
subjects of love and loss, and despite not entirely hitting the mark in terms
of narrative clarity, it is a lovely thing to behold, with its aerial displays and
sweeping Antony & the Johnsons-inspired soundtrack.

Not every experiment is as fun or fulfilling as some of the
shows I’ve name-checked here, but as a whole, Theatre Souk
offers a tremendous experience of innovative and experimental theatre and a
fantastic evening out.