Paradise Lost is a work that leaves you stunned. It rattles along at a reckless pace, seeming to have no direction then hits the target with blinding accuracy. Afifi manages to slip betwixt and between the characters, juggling the humour and the deadly serious with great dexterity in a performance that, despite its low-key wrapping, is a tour de force.

There’s much to think about in this intense and intriguing performance.

****

“Duke has a theatre director’s instinct for clear communication, but a dancer’s deftness in the way he moves between moods, scenes and characters, music, text and movement; the deeply poignant deflected by a joke (such as an anachronistic quip about Medea teaching pilates). Dance is used to get inside a moment and expand it, making visible the forces of lust, power, attraction, obstruction, struggle and fate, like the gods working with or against mortals at their whim.”

*****

“It’s a rare treat to see a show that tickles your funnybone, messes with your head, breaks your heart then comes back to haunt your dreams. But Lost Dog’s fresh take on the myth of Medea is the real deal: a potent brew of dance, drama, music and glorious stage-scapes, with a GSOH to boot.”

*****

“The sense of anything-goes surprise is crucial. So let’s just say that this show playfully(towards the end, very bracingly) recasts the famous myth of female vengeance as aberserk courtroom drama that embraces maternal love, male cravenness and self-delusion, and plenty more besides, playing out on a razor’s edge between humour andhorror and giving you heaps to ponder. The cast acquit themselves superbly, with MayaCarroll first among equals as a dancer, but Hannah Shepherd’s Medea shattering in herclimactic speech.”

****

Duke disassembles existing stories and remakes them in his own style. He domesticates myth and skirmishes with the mundane before rising to operatic heights of expression through movement, language, sound and vision.Anyone seeking a corrective to the festive overload of Santas, elves and Sugar Plum Fairies should look no further”

*****

“Medea gets a brilliant update through dance”

****

“Lost Dog have created a Christmas show like no other. This inventive and alternative experience is not to be missed. The talent and energy was inspiring and despite the tragic ending, this show provides the hope and joy of witnessing an extraordinary theatrical production.”

*****

“The entire work is clearly stamped with Duke’s innovative and holistic approach to performance particularly in the way he collides the mundane with the magnificent. The judicious musical choices, the seamless technical wizadry, the audacious cocktail of groundling humour, bathos and sudden skull-freezing drama plus the raw energy of the dancers…an impressionistic work of steadily accumulating power…”

****

“The passages of dance, however, which punctuate the piece between spoken scenes, are the exact opposite of this emotional restriction – whereas their words conceal, their bodies reveal. Lost Dog – led by choreographer Ben Duke – have a physical language that sits somewhere between total balletic gracefulness and the movements happening in an indie sleaze mosh pit. When not falling poetically into each other’s arms, the dancers ricochet and shake like teenagers having an existential crisis in the dark.” ****

“Ben Duke directs a triumphant theatre-dance interpretation of the Dickens classic that offsets complexity with out-loud laughs” ****

“What I love about In a Nutshell is that Duke avoids sentimentality – at one point questioning why we even bothered going to the theatre as it was such a hassle – yet stirs up in us deeply felt emotions about what we are missing right now.” ****

“He conveys with surreptitious brilliance how theatre’s suspension of disbelief is both profoundly potent and as fragile as glass.” *****

“leaves you aching to get back to one more collective leap of faith’

“It is painful; but painfully funny too.”

It's not often you're doubled over with laughter and wiping away tears of sadness during the same show. Given the components that come together in Juliet & Romeo, however, it's no surprise. *****

‘Duke’s handling of this material is beautifully assured. His writing is fast, inventive and smart; the interleaving of movement, text and music (mostly a selection of pop classics) is expertly paced.’

Comic awkwardness tipping into vulnerable emotion is a hallmark of Ben Duke’s work. ****