The Notebook, Battersea Arts Centre

Forced Entertainment is one of the few established British companies known for devising non-narrative and fragmented shows, using performers playing themselves rather than characters. In that sense, what they offer is closer to a performance art piece than a play and, accordingly, the atmosphere differs from the typical theatre trip. 

This new production is based on the 1986 novel The Notebook by Hungarian writer Ágota Kristóf and tells the story of twin brothers evacuated from their home to the Hungarian countryside during World War II to live with their grandmother on her farm. Strikingly, the boys, the narrators of the book, remain unnamed as they struggle to adjust and survive in their new surroundings. Depicted as social outsiders with a warped understanding of the world, the children must fight to maintain control in an environment shaped by harshness, corruption and opportunism

The play, is brought to us by the LIFT Festival. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year LIFT prides itself on bringing innovative shows and imaginative storytelling to its audience. Read the rest of our festival recommendations here.

It will be interesting to see how Forced Entertainment, whose last show at the Battersea Art Centre, Tomorrow's Parties, was about the different ways of telling a story, combines its own research on form with rendering the journey of these young twins through war.