The Encounter: Complicite Simon McBurney

Seldom do I leave a theatre as utterly sated as last night. McBurney had delivered what has to be the most comprehensively impressive and entertaining evening of theatre that I have ever had the privilege to experience. A totally immersive exercise in storytelling that pulled on every sense, aural, visual, physical (by suggestion) and ultimately both entertaining and moving. This provocative journey of the senses was delivered with such style and used incredible technologies to do it, but those technologies were never used to blind us with science, far from it, they were used with a subtlety and discretion that only a masterful hand would use.

McBurney and his collaborators are masterful, so much so that one disregards the wizardry and focuses on a cast of players, delivered of course by one actor and a few off stage voices. Before embarking on this piece of theatrical magic McBurney explains the technology and makes you feel that your head, your brain and senses will become a part of that process and indeed as the story grows you feel like you are not just watching a drama but are actually present. Aural, cinematic, theatrical, poetic, spectacular but finally this is a compellingly human tale delivered by one of the greatest exponents of modern theatre. An unmissable adventure that will remain with me for a very long time if not for ever.

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, 11 May 2016

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