Cure
Recently David Wheeler the artistic Director of the IOU Theatre
group contacted Curlew Marquees. The company needed four framed
marquees to stage "The Cure” a play about illness and health. The
play combines music and poetry, dramatic props and costumes, mechanical
devices as well as a giant leach!
I hope you enjoy the photographs! Please click on them to reviel
a full sized image.
Back to Marquee
hire
The Stage May 17th 2001
Cure
Manchester
Invitations inform the audience that we are wedding guests and
as such we are ushered into a marquee where we are greeted by
chaos. The married couple is missing, the band is delayed at Watford
and the caterers are still setting up for the reception. That
is the anarchic opening of this piece at Upper Campfield, an exciting
theatrical experience which invites the participants to witness
the success marriage of theatre and music.
It is part of this year's x.trax festival in Manchester,
and is only one section of IOU Theatre's fascinating triple
bill of visual innovation, proving once more that it is one of
the most inventive and prolific performance companies in the country.
Performed in a series of tents, linked by a labyrinth of corridors,
the audience then follows the collapsed father of the bride through
a series of bizarre medical treatments. Shepherded by officious
nurses, we encounter a 50ft blood-sucking leech, while in the
funfair tent we find, through listening to the talking colostomy
bags and taking part in the rifle range and roulette wheel, that
life is a gamble.
But what appears to be inspired lunacy is in fact a cleverly
constructed multimedia event, professionally executed by an excellent
cast of talented actors and musicians, who prefer not to be singled
out but to retain their corporate identity.
This theatrical tonic should be required viewing for jaded directors
everywhere and proves that original theatre is still alive and
well.
Natalie Anglesey.
IOU Theatre
X-Trax.org.uk
The Stage
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