Review: Transform

Transform, the festival of new and experimental work staged at West Yorkshire Playhouse has become a much more cohesive and bigger beast, making the impressive leap in a single year.

Last year the festival, which runs over two weekends at the venue, felt anarchic and ad hoc, which worked for the concept. This year the organisers have captured a festival spirit but it feels much more slick and cohesive, with the professionalism of the venue infusing the events.

Last weekend, among the melange of different events, was a performance of Nine and Your Last Breath.

Nine was a collection of short pieces each performed by a single person described as ‘ordinary’ members of the public.

The standard was varied, which is to be expected, but all hit an impressive benchmark, which was not.

The ones that rose high above the benchmark were Shazia Ashraf, who is a brilliantly funny performer taking the fact that she can’t play the piano to hilarious heights, Sheila Howarth who danced in the face of potentially terminal illness and Emi Neilson who acted out the fantasies of the desk bound wage slave.

The pieces were developed with three directors and the disparate, risky nature of the work was engrossing.

Your Last Breath was a far more accomplished piece of work, if a little indulgent at times. The attraction was two fold here – the chance to see an interesting young company of theatre makers playing with the form and their practice and the chance to see the Playhouse’s enormous Quarry Theatre reconfigured to a studio space, itself a thrilling spectacle.

To April 28.