Concrete Playground

Federico Garcia Lorca, the king of magical realism, isn't exactly your most typical of writers. So when a performance event claims to "smash open" one of his texts, you should be guessing that you're in for something extraordinary. The Rabble, who are responsible for this work, crack apart Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba like an egg and play around in the goo that emerges. The highly visual and visceral performance that results is a little like The Virgin Suicides on acid. Sexuality and repression, queens and monsters, tradition and savagery clash, mingle and create all kinds of weird offspring.

Yet somehow this abstract and challenging performance is also irresistibly compelling. I suspect it has something to do with the way it assaults all senses at once: the visual design, the choreography of lighting and sound and the performance of the actors could all stand as works of art in their own right. Another possibility is the potency of the story at the heart of the action. Lorca's tale is excruciatingly tragic and beautiful, the kind that makes it hard to sit back and watch. Cageling is implacable, passionate and exceptionally vivid.