2001 Fiona Ellis in Northern Review event of the month rated Grand Magix, the NWSI finale of the Stockton international Riverside Festival, top equal with Robert Lapage’s Dark Side of the Moon. (As Lapage is god… to agree would be to suffer from delusions of grandeur but thanks anyway Fiona!)
NWSI at the Fira delighted the audience with a torrent of
visual imagery and after a storm of applause left everyone with the pure excitement
of art.
- Carlos Gill, Director of the Fira de Carrer de Tarrega, 1995
Beautifully graceful body movements, incredible stretched
costumes, and alarm activating fireworks, combined with an excellent musical
mix gave their set an irresistable edge over the competition.
- Review of the Plymouth Barbican Street Theatre Festival, 1995
Neighbourhood Watch Stilts was the group that stunned spectators
with its "extraordinary explosion of colour and movement".
- Little Hampton Gazette, 1997
An enthusiastic audience of young and old followed a series of transformations,
where the actors, roam in undulating motion across the setts at Vaagsalmenningen.
two to each all-enveloping textile costume, kept evolving into new shapes.
As living sculptures in red and black and white, they transformed themselves
from one minute to the next. Beautiful
and somewhat mystical. A rapport is established between the audience and the
performers, who emerge in more and more of these strange groups through a
narrow opening in the red cloth that forms a boundary between stage and backstage
areas.
With four stilts each, and completely covered in their gorgeous fabrics, they make us wonder sometimes which parts are arms and which are legs. Two tower high over the rest, and suddenly challenge one another to a fight! Recalling the days of Knights, they use stilts as lances. There follows a strange formal stilt-dance, a kind of wooden-legged pas-de-deux. Then they entwine, face to face.
Meanwhile, something that might be a millipede comes crawling
out, becoming a great amoebic mass with maybe a dozen people inside. The creature
wriggles in every direction, while children and adults alike, stare in fascination.
The giant amoeba returns the stares, throwing itself towards us with its own
mouths agape, as the music is whipped up into a crescendo. Then the wall-to-wall
monster is whirled back and forth, changing shape so dramatically that it
eventually resembles nothing so much as a storm-whipped sea. As the sea withdraws,
it even seems to 'bow' gratefully for the audience's applause.
- Chromarama review extracts from Bergen's Tidende Homepage Review of
Chromarama at Vaagsalmenningen, 27 May 2002
A complete and lasting impression was guaranteed by the work
of Newcastle street theatre company Neighbourhood Watch Stilts International.
Three times they plunged into the Kronenplatz and three times they astounded
the crouds with their fantastic costumes and enchanting performance. Whether
it was the inquisitive and audacious bird riders, or the heart stopping worm
characters, or the lights of the flaming fireworks and frenzy of rhythm, the
ensemble transfixed the gaze of young and old alike.
- Karlsruhe daily paper, Montag 15 Juli 1996
Fire, noise, smoke, drums, stilt-walkers and evil giants
invaded the audience as Armageddon descended on Arundel Castle! It was pure,
visceral, thrilling theatre...a superb and totally fantastic finale of a type
which people seldom experience.
- Jeremy Evans, 1997
I was completely blown away by Neighbourhood Watch and
the impact they had on the kids, it was as if their world had changed once
they saw them, because they never had conceived that creatures like that could
exist.
- Paul Collard , Drector of the Newhaven Festival of Arts and Ideas, Newhaven
Register, 1998 .
Place Masséna hier après midi c'est le chenille
qui redémarre Un mille pattes extraordinaire par sa longueur, ses couleurs
et surtout par son originalitéas.
- Nice Matin lundi 18 Fevrier 2002 (at Nice Carnival Parade) .