Valentine’s day has come and gone, but there’s still plenty to love about Vault Festival 2019. Here are our top five picks for Vault Festival Week 5.
How to Date a Magical Creature
23 – 24 February
The world’s most (in)famous magical creatures and fantastical beasties (as chosen by the audience) reveal their most intimate secrets and hot gossip In this hilarious ‘hard hitting’ improvised comedy chat show.
Past guests include Santa and his twin brother Satan, a Mer-Wolf, the Grim Reaper and the Lucky Charms Leprechaun. Presented by self-titled celebrity TV journalist Toby Vanilla, How To Date a Magical Creature features a viper’s nest of some the UK’s best-known comedians from TV and London’s West-End.
Celebrate
20 – 24 February
After years of false starts and missed chances Howard has finally found his calling in life. He’s recently qualified as a funeral celebrant. He’s making a difference to society, at last, he feels like he matters.
We follow Howard through his successes and failures as he struggles to become the most in demand funeral celebrant in the country, only to discover an incident from his past that continues to haunt him. Celebrate is a monologue that examines the routines that govern how we cope with loneliness and grief, and how we are shaped by the stories that we create.
Digging Deep
20 – 24 February
Digging Deep examines the rise of suicide in young men – and in particular, in young men from working class backgrounds. The play looks to explore the tight camaraderie within these communities, lack of opportunity, and feelings of frustration from young people becoming financial burdens on their parents.
The play also touches on the concept of euthanasia and ties into the recent ‘Cost of Dying’ debate – in which bodies are being kept in morgues/funeral homes for up to a year to enable families to raise money for a funeral.
Tacenda
20 – 24 February
An exciting new piece of devised theatre about why we sugar-coat our words from the award-winning company behind ‘A Year From Now’ and ‘Ok, Bye‘.
Combining physical theatre, devised storytelling and a vicious sense of humour, Tacenda will blur the boundaries between reality and the surreal, forcing us all to relive our mistakes until we have the nerve to be straight with each other.
Elizabeth and Joy have been friends forever but they still have a tacenda. We all have to bite our tongues sometimes – right? But if Elizabeth and Joy don’t start being honest they’re going to live the same dishonest day over and over again … and they’re not the only people who will suffer as a result.
Orlando
20 – 24 February
Orlando is presented by the creative team behind Kenneth Emson’s Plastic at the Old Red Lion. Lucy Roslyn’s new play is the story of a person looking for escape, a person desperate to leave behind the identitarian bullshit of 2019.
In 1928 Virginia Woolf imagined her own freedom through the character of Orlando. Heartbroken by her affair with Vita Sackville-West, Woolf created a young boy born in Elizabethan England, who lives and loves, writes and rewrites through four hundred years, ending her days as a woman in the twentieth century.
Written and performed by Lucy Roslyn (The State vs John Hayes, Showmanship, Goody) and directed by Josh Roche, winner of the JMK Award 2017 (My Name is Rachel Corrie, Plastic, This Must Be The Place).
