Calixto Bieito Mashes Up The Forest Of Arden, Birnam Wood, Etc.

“A huge pile of soil has been tipped over the floor; actors writhe and squirm through the mulch beneath a blasted tree festooned with red balloons. It looks like a cross between a garden centre, a children’s party and one of Samuel Beckett’s bleaker visions. It is in fact the setting for Bieito’s latest work, Forests – a piece for which the unpredictable but often brilliant Catalan director has scoured the works of Shakespeare for every mention of a wood, a copse or a bosky glade, and cut-and-pasted them into an epic, arboreal mash-up.”