MINI FESTIVAL

I’m aware that you’ve read plenty about The Arches in our features, but there’s so much more to say. This youthful and creative hub, enjoying its 15th year putting ideas into spectacular practice, has the treat of its Arches Live theatre festival coming up, a must see for anyone interested in theatre at the edges of aesthetic and political boundaries.

There are too many highlights to mention here, but a notable presence will be two founding members of the New York-based Riot Group, Drew Friedman and Stephanie Viola, who are teaming up with local boy Alan McKendrick to present Finished With Engines. It’s a bleak and satirical political piece set near a nuclear teasting site, with a civil war as background. The Rioteers have long been associated with challenging and brilliantly insightful poetic commentaries on world politics, so this looks full of promise.

Neil Docherty, whose thought-provoking adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ Tone Clusters gained some international recognition at this year’s Fringe, is also back, this time with Lisa Marie Gregan’s La Petit Morte, an exploration of our fascination for female murderers. Another very bright young presence who might make himself felt in the coming festival is Steve Collins, director of a devised production called Self Contained from the NTS Young Company. An exploration of loneliness, paranoia and our modern sense of the apocalypse, this looks one of many treats at this year’s jamboree.