VAULT Festival 2019 Highlights

If you want to find the best new theatre, comedy and art, you have to go underground. VAULT Festival returns this month with over 400 events, centred round the vibrant vaults beneath Waterloo Station. Pop-up venues include shipping containers, caravans and escape rooms.

With new writing, theatre, stand-up, song, and cabaret, you’ll find everything from late night parties to shows the kids will love. This is art for and by a diverse array of people.

The entertainment is on the cutting edge of the art world, with several plays fresh from runs at The Edinburgh Fringe. Queens of Sheba, winner of a Stage Edinburgh Award, is a poetic and unflinching look at misogynoir. The Talented Mr Ripley is an audience favourite, and will be rounding off the eight-week festival.

Eat Your Heart Out is a riot grrrl party

VAULT Festival 2019 highlights: Late Night Events

Eat Your Heart Out (Saturday 16 February)

Eat Your Heart out is an anti-Valentine’s riot party from immersive events creators Shotgun Carousel. The late night party will feature live music from punk-witch riot grrrl band DREAM NAILS and a DJ set from Metronomy’s Anna Prior. Expect a multi-room extravaganza of bands, cabaret, DJs and even a sham wedding chapel. The dress code is kitsch and extra, so neon and glitter are a must.

Culture Whisper is offering Gold Whisper members free tickets to this event.

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Balaklava Blues (25 January — 16 March)

Balaklava Blues is an ethno-bass live set like no other. Mark and Marichka Marczyk will sing live to original EDM, trap, trance and electro-pop influenced tracks whilst playing documentary footage, polyphonic blues and Soviet cartoons. The Marczyks's set, like their award-winning play Counting Sheep, is inspired by their experiences of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity uprising. They have previously taken it on a humanitarian tour of Ukraine and to Latitude Festival.

Culture Whisper is offering Gold Whisper members free tickets to this event.

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Carnival of Crows (13 - 17 February)

Step into the dark, weird world of the Victorian macabre in Molly Beth Morossa's Carnival of Crows. Set within a carnival sideshow, this one-woman show introduces a collection of twisted, interweaving stories made alive by poetry, puppetry, and cabaret. Prepare for many laughs, many fears, and many oddities.

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A performance of Counting Sheep

VAULT Festival 2019 highlights: Main Shows

Counting Sheep (23 January — 17 March)

Having picked up a Scotsman Fringe First Award in Edinburgh, the return to stage of Counting Sheep is hotly anticipated. Intriguingly billed as "guerrilla folk opera", the show combines music from the Lemon Bucket Orkestra with immersive visuals to relay Mark and Marichka Marczkys’ experience of the 2014 Kiev uprising. We loved it.

Culture Whisper is offering Gold Whisper members free tickets to this event.

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Blue Planet III (9 — 17 March)

If you’re looking for a show for the whole family, we’d recommend the “hugely entertaining” (Chortle) Blue Planet III. Two interns at the BBC attempt to produce a third instalment of David Attenborough’s iconic documentary series, but must contend with their own ineptitude — and a completely flooded office.

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Desiree Burch (3 February)

A familiar face from Live at the Apollo and The Mash Report, Funny Woman award-winning comic Desiree Burch is performing an hour of comedy in The Vaults for one night only. Other highlights include Taskmaster’s Phil Wang and Elf Lyons’s surreal musical comedy Love Songs to Guinea Pigs.

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How to Date Magical Creature features recognisable and unfamiliar species

How to Date a Magical Creature (23 — 24 February)

Want to spend the evening watching what would happen if you crossed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them with The Graham Norton Show? Then check out this interactive improv comedy, in which the audience gets to choose which magical creatures' lives to dissect. How to Date a Magical Creature secretly previewed at Hoopla Impro Festival last year, delighting audiences and selling out; the show has its official premiere at the VAULT festival before a national tour. Catch it while you can!

Culture Whisper is offering Gold Whisper members free tickets to this event.

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Tilda Swinton Answers an Ad on Craigslist (6 — 17 February)

Tom Lenk (remember him from Buffy the Vampire Slayer?) plays Tilda Swinton, who performs an intimate character study on a depressed gay man from Craigslist ahead of her next movie. Deemed “hilarious” and “uplifting” by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, this show sold out in New York, LA and at the Fringe, and is not to be missed.