Flare

Crikey I'm having a cultural week, today I cadged a spare ticket to a matinee performance at the Studio in the Royal Exchange. It's part of the Flare International Festival of New Theatre, known for the strange and the controversial - my companion had been to a piece involving a solo performer in a polar bear costume where the small audience had to follow instructions in envelopes on their seats. This play wasn't that strange or controversial, although there wasn't a plot to speak of - it involved two people discussing Diderot's book Jacques the Fatalist and his Master, with lots of laughs. To take a quote from the piece I would describe it as a "language party".