The Miracle Show (2005-2008)

The Miracle Show

A tale of travelling outsiders searching for a better life in their rather miraculous Lada! An eccentric family arrive in Britain presenting a road show from the back of their ramshackle vehicle. Supported by Arts Council England with co-commission investment from Zap Art in Brighton and the Big in Falkirk Festival.

Performers: Vic Llewellyn, Huw Johnson, Agnieszka Blonska, Jenny Sanderson, Dani Landau, Jon Beedell
Original Director: Luci Gorell Barnes

The Miracle Show – review

“We arrive at Brighton’s Town Hall Square via a mock passport control into a charmingly surreal scene – a traveller’s encampment, with a van, a yurt-tent and a resident family of refugees. The opening creates a brilliantly warped sense of another culture in the celebration of The Feast Day of Our Lady of the Bears.

The repeating bear absurdity works with great charm to portray the madness and precious fragility of this imaginary cultural alienation. Was the play inspired by Shakespeare’s infamous stage direction ‘Exit pursued by a bear’?

The visual, physical and verbal elements of the narrative radiate delightfully from a small core of images. This is how theatre poetry should work! Some members of the audience are invited into Ursula’s tent for ‘the cinema of the lost and found’, and others into the van for storytelling washed down with a swig of something heart warming, while outside the main play continues without loss of tempo and with exquisite comic timing, as when Grilho (Jon Beedell) finishes his pantomimic mourning the loss of his son with the mundane question ‘What’s the time’?

Strong performances all–round created a convincing world in which exploration of the plight of refugees was combined with a delightful sense of a dysfunctional family culture and very un-English feelings of volatility and warmth. Agnieszka Blonska’s tremendous energy and vivacious performance as Krusza was nothing short of sensational. From her entry to the end she held the audience in her palm. One needs to see The Miracle Show more than once to get it all – I hope I do get that opportunity.”

Paul Miskin, Total Theatre Magazine, Autumn 05

Short promo film for The Miracle Show

Full length film of The Miracle Show and The Big House, as performed at Brighton Festival 2006

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