Sadler’s Wells, London
September 15, 2025
Hofesh Shechter is a highly regarded choreographer, composer and director, winner of many awards, and an Associate Artist at Sadlers Wells. His work is always challenging and ‘out of the box’. However, Theatre of Dreams is so far out of the box, that I found it impossible to follow.
The staging is certainly innovative and exciting. It opens enticingly with a single dancer moving slowly into a dreamlike state. This then moves into a filmic effect of quick cuts from scene to scene with flashbacks, using stage curtains to achieve this very effectively. So effectively, that you almost forget that what you are watching is live on stage, and start relating to it as a film.
Those curtains are opened and closed repeatedly across different sections of the stage, revealing dancers for a few moments only, in different throes of dreamlike states. It is enthralling and totally captivating. Until it isn’t.
Photo Todd MacDonald
Unfortunately, two aspects in this long sequence, repeated later in the performance, mitigate against the brilliant visual conceptualisation. First is the endless repetition of what appear random movements. There are glimmers of inventive and original choreography, but they get lost under a blanket of sequenced everyday movements, and shakings of all sorts, all endlessly repeated to such an extent that it I found it impossible to focus on the progression of the piece, if indeed there was any progression.
The second is the volume of the sound and music. Composed by Shechter, it’s interesting and fits well with the staging. However, it was not only uncomfortably loud, but also run through with periods of incessant drumming delivered on the average heartbeat sequence, which can cause physical stress. While it’s fair enough to present a sort of nightmarish experience, the audience surely also wants to enjoy being the onlooker, not find themselves participatory to stress and discomfort. Many people around, had their hands over their ears for long stretches.
The dancers are quite outstanding, however. Technically superb, they performed the choreography with a commendable focus, precision and energy. The chorus work was timed to the split second. Everyone was a moving, twisting, shaking cog in the dream machine that Shechter had created. One can only be in awe of the organisation that must have been going on backstage.
Tom Visser’s lighting catches the mood, dark red and brooding, but still sufficient to enable the dancers to be seen, and creatively enhancing that filmic effect.
I came away feeling that I should have just experienced something extraordinary, but instead was pleased to be relieved of the incessant drumming and the endless repetition of movement. Real dreams only last for a few seconds.