Reviews
The Times
Libby Purves
“This Handspring-UK show, based on Ted Hughes’s Crow poems, must be one of the oddest and most unnerving hours of the Cultural Olympiad. Moreover, it is by no means the least athletic event of the 2012 East London summer. Puppetry and poetry are at its heart, but the dancer-puppeteers, ragged, barefoot and primitively grimy, hurl themselves and one another around a steep rough mound with an erotic uninhibited savagery, and from time to time with audible thumps.”
24/06/2012
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The Observer
Killian Fox
“The stately, magnificent creations in [War Horse] are a far cry from these ragged, tricksterish specimens. They reflect the fragmentary nature of Hughes's book, the intentional crudity of his language, the raw, primitive life-force that the poet saw embodied in the black-eyed, flesh-eating crow. ”
24/06/2012
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The Stage
Natalie Woolman
“Taking on Hughes’ poetry for dramatic interpretation is a tall order, and Handspring is only partially successful here. All the show’s bells and whistles - the dance, the projections - stop the audience from developing the kind of emotional response we had to Joey in War Horse. The puppets are inspirational, why weren’t they put front and centre here?”
22/06/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Jane Shilling
“Ben Duke, Crow’s choreographer, writes in a sweetly frank programme note that there were moments in the gestation of this production when he thought that poetry and dance “would be much better off if they never saw each other again”. There are moments like that for the audience, too. The narrative line, quite obscure in Hughes’s text, is not especially clarified by its dramatic interpretation.”
22/06/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Holly Williams
“Crow's opening poem, "Two Legends", begins: "Black was the without eye / Black the within tongue / Black was the heart ..." I'm afraid to say, my heart sank into a similar despondency – for this is very much "actors doing poetry". Overly articulated, overly romantic, oh-so deeply felt, these visceral but vibrant poems are smothered in well-rounded pronunciation at the expense of Hughes's bite, and – even more crucially – his wit.”
01/07/2012
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The Sunday Times
(Unknown)
“The Queen was thrilled to see Joey, the puppet hero of War Horse, rearing Thamesside during her jubilee river pageant. Hard to imagine her cracking a grin at this show”
01/07/2012
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Time Out
Andrzej Lukowski
“There is one real star in this maiden production from Handspring UK, the British sister company to South African puppetry gurus Handspring, and his name is Ted Hughes.”
22/06/2012
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The Evening Standard
Henry Hitchings
“The puppets are the main draw, and there’s more than one crow. The first one we see is a ragged opportunist, but it has a limited stage presence. In the original, the crow speaks and laughs and has sinister thoughts. Here it hops, pecks, twitches, flaps, and make a noise that’s a cross between a bark and a yawn.”
22/06/2012
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The Guardian
Lyn Gardner
“Duke's choreography mirrors the ugly-beautiful quality of Hughes' simple, granite text, but what happens on stage is often merely illustrative of the words being spoken by the cast into a microphone at the side of the stage. The ensemble are excellent, but the show remains closed and secretive, as if its creators are so close to the source material they have forgotten the basic requirement of making it accessible to the audience.
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25/06/2012
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