PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Notes from Bristol Old Vic's work-in-progress showcase Ferment (continues until Sat 21 Jan)

THEATRE Alan Williams' 'The Wrong Kind of Snow' is a shaggy-dog story of his impressions of returning to England after years abroad, Williams'  curiosity and sense of the absurd making him a pilgrim in a strange land that he seeks to comprehend. His total recall of minute detail gives this dog a very long leash, and although it contains some priceless vignettes (grotty bedsits and the eccentricities of public transport) that capture the cheerful national celebration of failure, it could do with a good trim. At almost two hours, it's an overly long word portrait that has moments of real charm, but which ultimately becomes bogged down in self-indulgent detail. With a hard prune, a soundscape and some theatrical touches, though, 'TWKOF' could come alive as a piece of storytelling. (Rina Vergano)

Theatre-maker Tom Wainwright and musician-who-fell-to-earth Sam Halmarack are two opposite poles magnetically drawn back together to revisit their piece, ‘Psychodrama’, one of the highlights of last July’s Ferment. The peculiar chemistry they have on stage is unique, compelling and watchable enough to be bottled and sold as an antidote to theatrical predictability. An intriguing and entertaining artistic collaboration-cum-tussle that bubbles under with risk and invention: mental, hilarious and yet strangely moving and healing. (RV)

The reading of Greg Glover’s ‘Family’, in four interlocking monologues, is really engaging, with a gem on virtually every page. Glover has a distinctive, original and promising voice as a writer, and a sharp ear for meaty, beaty, big and bouncy patter with a blackly comical edge. The narrative and characters all need further development as a work-in-progress, but Glover’s creation of Dave (a jack-the-lad dad from the Welsh Valleys) and Dean Rehman’s roguish rendition of the character are a delight in their own right.

Bozarts’ ‘Dmitri & Uncle Joe’ is an experiment resulting from an intriguing Big Idea: an imagined meeting between Shostakovich and Stalin in a frozen dacha. The resulting collaboration between musical creatives and an actor really needs a playwright on board in order to move beyond realism, telling instead of showing, and a heavily didactic text. Cutting right back on words and foregrounding the music (the piece’s strength) with a light, impressionistic, theatrical touch would offer a safer route through dense and impenetrable raw material. That said, the show is a sell-out and the audience thoroughly enjoy it, particularly the gorgeous musical interludes from Jon James on piano and the Georgian choir. (RV)