Following performances last summer of Red Ladies at the Southbank Centre and Margate Turner Contemporary gallery, the genre defying Clod Ensemble return with an intimate show with an original dark fairy tale at its heart.
The Red Chair is a surreal ballad populated with larger than life characters, told in rich and saucy Scots dialect which draws the audience into the extraordinary world of a troubled family (with a dram of whisky to help along the way).
A contemporary take on folk and fairytale storytelling traditions, The Red Chair tells the story of a father who eats and eats until he turns into the chair he is sitting upon, the wife doomed to cook his meals and their ‘inveesible’ daughter.
By turns haunting and humorous, The Red Chair takes audiences on a journey through a landscape of twisted reason, extreme compulsion and eye watering complacency, where domestic drudgery happens on an operatic scale and a father’s dereliction of duty reaches epic proportions.
Created in collaboration with artist Sarah Cameron and based on her original book, The Red Chair is performed with the physical vitality that has become a trademark of Clod Ensemble’s work, rooted in the training that both Sarah and director Suzy Willson received at the Jacques Lecoq school in Paris. Woven into the production is an original sound score created by Clod Ensemble co-artistic director Paul Clark.
See www.clodensemble.com for more details.
11th & 12th March
Canada Water Culture Space, London
21 Surrey Quays Road, London SE16 7AR
www.canadawaterculturespace.org.uk
19th March
Lakeside Theatre, Essex
University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ
lakesidetheatre.org.uk
24th & 25th March
Northern Stage, Newcastle
Barras Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE1 7RH
www.northernstage.co.uk
3rd April
Turner Contemporary, Kent (In association with Margate Theatre Royal)
Rendezvous, Margate CT9 1HG
Theatreroyalmargate.com
23rd – 26th April
Stratford Circus, London
Theatre Square, London E15 1BX
22nd – 23rd May
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre (Part of Brighton Festival)
New Road, Brighton, BN1 1UG
http://brightonfestival.org/
19th June
Malvern Cube
Albert Road North, Malvern, WR14 2YF
www.malverncube.com
