"Food for body and soul" by Simon Dale for remotegoat on 02/10/09 Pint, Plate Performance at Central Station, King's Cross - all for £7? Surely not. Three Person'd God , a monologue written by Craig Jordan Baker and performed by Sophie Talbot kicked off the evening. It was a philosophical examination of a woman, an actress, playing three roles - an activist, a barren woman (her label, not mine) and an actress - which increasingly bleed into one another so that she (and we) are left increasingly uncertain as to who the real person is, where one role stops and another begins: which is reality, which is performance. Set in an unnamed dystopia, it also raises questions of state versus individual and the struggle of the human spirit in the face of sweeping state tyranny. Performed with passion and fluency, Sophie Talbot's portrayal of the woman came alive most in the third section as she shifted from the stage to the wings of the audience and delivered her third role in which all roles blurred into one, evoking a powerful sense of personal dislocation and isolation. Next up was Sally Beaumont with her piece The Other Side of Everything...

Beowulf, Theatre Royal Brighton, October 1 10:45am Wednesday 2nd October 2013 in The Critic By Tim Ridgway , Local government reporter It is a tale that has been told thousands of times since first being uttered in the giant banqueting halls of Viking and Saxon England. So when Brighton-based Barely Human Puppets decided to tackle the epic saga of Beowulf, the task was simple: combine something very traditional with something totally original. And they succeeded. Entering via the stage door at Brighton’s Theatre Royal it was clear that this was not to be a run-of-the-mill show. Directed to a part of backstage rarely seen by members of the public, the intimate setting saw some members of the sell-out audience of 60 sitting on cushions. The stage was simple, dominated by black drapes with 7th-century designs carefully stitched on. Narrating the tale was Tom Dussek and, together with his range of voices, the tale was expertly told through a mixture of poetry, puppetry and shadow images. With some excellent accompaniment from “musical adventurer” Paul Mosley, the Saxon imagery was well and truly thrust on to those present. From the occasional giggle to terrifying battle scenes, the hour-long show whizzed by...

Barely Human Puppets “Beowulf “ at the Phoenix Theatre and Studios, Sat 9th November 2013 The telling of an ancient saga through puppets is a heady combination. When done well, the artefact of a disjointed model deftly brought into animation heightens our sense of reality. The Barely Human Puppets in this show are no more than a metre high, so the focus is intense as the saga rattles along telling of monsters, heros and the odd decapitation. Beowulf is pre-Anglo Saxon, a fireside tale of awesome deeds recounted by the bard and passed down in strict verbatim from generation to generation. It is the survivor of countless long rhyming odes that affirmed the identity and traditions of the clan. Barely Human’s Beowulf holds the traditional format of the story teller as the soundtrack with the puppets as the on stage action and this is a poignant mix in playing the tragedy, the whimsical comedy, the great deeds and dreadful human ordinariness of Beowulf himself. Tom Dussek is vibrant as the Bard, the storyteller, he delivers his tale with pace and élan. All the puppeteers are visible on stage: but that is the remarkable thing about puppets- we can see...