Best of BE @ HOME, Manchester

BE Festival is Birmingham’s international theatre festival (BE: Birmingham and Europe), which brings together daring and exciting new performances across the continent. Now in its fourth year, the festival’s Best of BE consists of four of this year’s audience favourites and as part of its tour alights in Manchester as part of HOME’s programme.

The showcase is wonderfully diverse: combining theatre, dance, comedy, music, film – and of course, a little audience interaction. Two of the pieces (Beating McEnroe and Loops and Breaks) directly require audience participation, yet it is the unique format of an interval dinner that truly creates integration and immersion, with audience members and performers invited to share experiences between mouthfuls.

The first performance, Beating McEnroe by Jamie Wood, is a bizarre yet beautiful retelling of a childhood memory shared by Wood and his older brother. Storyboarding the Wimbledon 1981 final between childhood heroes Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, the solo show explores youthful aspirations through movement, vivid image and a lending hand from the audience.  

From the Waltz to the Mambo is a blend of clowning, dance and text by Hungary’s Radioballet. The ten minute performance works from the discovered text of a 1960s ballroom manual that patrons ‘grace, taste and professionalism.’

Loops & Breaks by Julia Schwarzbach sees the audience invited to take part in the action and influence the course of the piece. Each audience member is given a set of instructions that is then triggered by Schwarzbach – instructions range from slapping her face to wearing a green morph suit.

Film and dance piece Waiting by Mokhallad Rasem is a hauntingly moving look at human interpretation of waiting: time wasted, peaceful moments or uncertain futures. Overall a thoroughly enjoyable evening and a wonderful opportunity to see the very best of the European arts scene in a digestible chunk.