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With a single dessert and just two glasses of wine our bill was kept in check - but the effort of doing so was not much fun
Babbo
Film
This is a film with beautiful performances and a visual style that urges you towards reflection
Bright Star
Theatre
Although the first half of Kwei-Armah’s production is pacy, funny and intelligent, the energy level then drops off
Seize The Day
I loved this film from start to finish. Take the girlfriend, tell your mum - I'd see it again tomorrow and will buy the dvd.
I saw this last night and can't remember the last time I was so moved in the theatre.
I have been to many of London's so-called best Japanese restaurants and none have been as good as the food that I've had at Aqua Kyoto
London,
Fiona Mountford's rating
Reader rating
Description: A combination of digital and live performance, exploring responsibility and guilt through short bursts of participatory adventures. Devised by Slung Low.
Trains: Tube/BR: Barbican/Moorgate 
Phone: 0845120 7550
Website: www.barbican.org.uk
Learning to fly: A woman tries to reconstruct the life of her wartime fighter pilot grandfather in Helium
Site-specific theatre pioneers Punchdrunk have challenged audiences to reconsider their viewing experience. Wandering through performance spaces and mingling with loitering actors, we the paying customers are no longer passive consumers.
Slung Low, this year’s winners of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award for experimental work, elaborate engagingly on these themes. Yet ultimately Helium proves stronger on the theory than any dramatic substance.
The Pit has been transformed into a series of large boxes that we enter singly to encounter performers or recorded voices. Thrill as we do at this novel combination of solitude and proximity to the action, the narrative is overly elliptical and, at just 30 minutes, frustratingly truncated. Given time, we might come to care about the enigmatic life of wartime fighter pilot Max, which his granddaughter attempts to piece together from his diary as the old man lies dying. However, the gaps between the dots we are asked to join are too great, and being given a (partially) explanatory booklet when we exit feels like a cop-out.
Helium, until 20 September (0207 638 8891).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
