The Coming Storm

Created 2012

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Forced Entertainment tangle and cross-cut multiple stories to make a compelling and unstable performance. From love and death to sex and laundry, from shipwrecks to falling snow, personal anecdotes rub shoulders with imaginary movies, and half-remembered novels bump into distorted fairytales.

Using a method as inventive as it is absurd, six performers create, collaborate, ambush and disrupt this epic saga that is resolutely too big for the stage. The result is comical, contradictory and poignant; full of wrong-headed tricks, broken dances, sleazy drum interruptions and perfunctory piano accompaniment. Everything builds and everything shimmers. Everything teeters and everything trembles. Everything is reshaped and everything is cannibalised.   The Coming Storm is Forced Entertainment at its best – trademark black humour, a collage of arresting images and an anarchic performance style.

Director Tim Etchells, and the regular group of Forced Entertainment performers – Robin Arthur, Cathy Naden, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall and Terry O’Connor – were joined for the project by Phil Hayes who previously worked with the company on The Thrill of It All.

The project also featured live music for the first time in the group’s work as well as continuing collaborations with the lighting designer Nigel Edwards and the sound designer and composer John Avery.

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REACTIONS

Lyn Gardner's Guardian Review

"a powerful and important piece of theatre ****"

What's On Stage

"Slowly, all hell breaks loose..."

The Times

"I could watch these performers for hours."

The Guardian

"@ForcedEnts #thecomingstorm never have I seen a performance where nothing went together so perfectly."

Twitter Reaction

credits

Conceived and devised by the company 

Performers Robin Arthur, Phil Hayes, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor
Direction Tim Etchells
Design Richard Lowdon
 Lighting Design Nigel Edwards
Music Phil Hayes / Forced Entertainment
Music Consultant John Avery
 Director’s Assistant Hester Chillingworth
Production Management Ray Rennie, Jim Harrison

The Coming Storm is a Forced Entertainment production

Co-produced by PACT Zollverein Essen, Festival d’Avignon Avignon, Theaterhaus Gessneralle Zurich, Tanzquartier Wien Vienna, Les Spectacles Vivants – Centre Pompidou Paris, Festival d’Automne à Paris Paris, LIFT London, Battersea Arts Centre London and Sheffield City Council