Vault Festival announced its diverse and large programme today. It includes a range of immersive theatre experience, including an adaptation of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan from team that brought you The Great Gatsby experience in 2017. The festival has expanded beyond its original space and is working with theatres in Waterloo to provide a comprehensive and always original Vault experience.

Theatre

Neverland, by Theatre Deli and The Guild of Misrule, producers of the 2017 immersive theatre sensation, The Great Gatsby, returns to VAULT 2018 with a full eight week run of this immersive musical adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s classic. This dark and dangerous world will be brought to life throughout the labyrinthine Vaults, with audiences encountering glittering pirates, mermaids, food fights, absinthe bars and soaring live music from a band of lost boys. Caravan, will serve up a healthy dose of immersive hip-hop dance, whilst Lamplighters will see audience led through an immersive, improvised spy story in the style of John Le Carre for a hilarious evening of drama, deception and treachery.

Revelations see the return of critically acclaimed James Rowland with a storytelling show about giving his best friends his sperm. Bismillah! An ISIS Tragicomedy, from Wound Up Theatre, sees two Brits meet on either side of a radical divide, while writer John O’Donovan’s If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You, sees two gay robbers do a whole lot of blow in this critical hit from Old Red Lion. Further new work comes from writer-performer Jessica Butcher with SPARKS, Abi Zakarian with I Have A Mouth And I Will Scream, Katie Jackson with Conquest and much more.

Circus & Magic

Becoming Shades serves up a sensory feast of dance, aerial acrobatics, music and fire performances up close and personal in Hades’ underworld as Chivaree Circus explode their 2017 award winning re-imagining of the classic myth of Persephone into a full 8-week immersive circus extravaganza. Directors and performers David Aula and Simon Evans team up again following 2017’s hit The Vanishing Man, to explore hypnotism and the human mind with The Vanishing Mankind. Born without hands or feet, Mahdi the Magician will perform wonders at VAULT, having overcome these incredible obstacles to become one of the world’s most extraordinary magicians.

Female Led

Continuing its commitment to female-led work, VAULT are proud to have programmed over 52% of shows written or directed by women. Paper Scissors Stone from Fringe First winner Katie Bonna takes a sharp-edged peek into gender conditioning whilst Glitter Punch, from Some Riot Theatre, deals with student/teacher relationship boundaries, receiving nine 4 star reviews over its run in Edinburgh. Foreign Body is the critically acclaimed solo show about healing after sexual assault from Imogen Butler-Cole, and The Strongbox by Stephanie Jacob looks at domestic slavery. Other female-led work at VAULT includes Mission Abort, Ad Libido, Big Bad , ZINA, A Girl and a Gun, Double Infemnity, The Vagina Dialogues and many more.

BAME

For a Black Girl, a piece of straight, honest storytelling from Nicole Acquah, is a powerful response to the claim that racism doesn’t exist in the UK. Upcoming star Nicole Henriksen’s second solo show, A Robot in Human Skin, is a heartfelt look at mental health, and the ways we treat and understand it while The Year of the Rooster Monk, sees award-winning absurdists Les Foules present Giselle LeBleu Gant in a part-cabaret, part-narrative, part-seance spectacle, which explores millennial isolation, black feminist movements and the problems of gentrification.

Focusing on stories of young black men in contemporary London, Still, We Dream by choreographer Joseph Toonga explores the power of relationships and the ugly reality of ‘the trumps and triumphs’ of reaching for your dreams through free-flowing, animalistic, expressive movement, blurring the lines of hip-hop and contemporary dance.

Accessibility and Integrated Arts

VAULT Festival will this year partner with the iF Platform (Integrated Fringe) to showcase the work of companies and artists producing work with disabled and non-disabled artists. MIA: Daughter’s of Fortune, from Mind the Gap, tackles the taboo subject of learning disability and parenthood with silliness, stories and statistics. Further integrated work includes the playfully devised Follow Suit from Silent Faces and Georgia Morrell’s Eyecon with more to follow.

LGBTQ

The festival celebrates a host of gender explorative pieces with the likes of Gypsy Queen, which offers a bold response to homophobia in boxing after widespread acclaim in Edinburgh. TESTOSTERONE is the critically acclaimed physical theatre comedy from Rhum & Clay, following Kit as he transitions from female to male in his early thirties, experiencing life on both sides of the gender divide. Consumables is an alarming concoction of knives, gimp masks, fetish videos and hostages and further gender explorative and LGBTQ work comes from Paloma Oakenfold with the darkly funny Stud, as well as Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal’s The Poetry We Make and Tumulus by Christopher Adams.

Musicals & Cabaret

Today’s ludicrous epoch is heartily lampooned by writer Isla van Tricht and composer Guy Woolf with Great Again, a musical exploring the sensitivities of Trumpian America, while the musical and political tomfoolery continues with The People’s Rock: A Musical from Nevertheless She, in which an impressionable young woman navigates a dystopian landscape with only 2020 US presidential candidate, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to guide her. From the creators of the award-winning sellout hit Buzz, Fat Rascal Theatre present Tom and Bunny Save the World, a zombie apocalypse musical which places women in the roles usually taken by men: the soldier, the scientist and the sexual instigator.

Family Entertainment

The multi-award-winning theatre company, ThisEgg, invites children and adults alike to save the world one bee at a time with Me & My Bee, a political party disguised as a party disguised as a comedy show. With a new supervillain in town, Doktor James’s Bad Skemes enlists audiences of all ages to help prove the title character is, in fact, the evilest guy around with more child-friendly shows in the form of One Duck Down by Faceplant Theatre and the return of cult classic Funz and Gamez from Phil Ellis.

Lates

The festival’s series of Lates promises to lure those seeking a further theatrical fix into the small hours as they revel in a selection of specially curated themed parties including a debaucherous Valentine’s Party, London’s fattest Mardi Gras celebration, a St Patrick’s Day blowout and an evening of funk, soul and Motown as South London Soul Train heads underground. Neverland’s party promises an exhilarating late night adventure while Chivaree Circus host LABYRINTH where revellers will delve into a world full of mind-boggling aerial performances, stupendous circus feats and intimate encounters. Trough London will turn up the heat with their leather-clad instalment, and The House of Burlesque: Lock In promises “Showgirl Explosions”, mini-burlesque tutorials, bespoke cocktails and a secret speakeasy for the night Time Out dubbed ‘Moulin Rouge on Acid”.

VAULT has also announced its Writers Gap scheme for talented emerging female writers to meet with producers and programmers from London Theatres, including the Donmar, Almeida and Old Vic, to explore and remove industry-wide barriers as well as a satellite venue as Vaults expands outside its Waterloo home and cements itself as one of London’s best Performance festivals

VAULT will for the first time spill into Waterloo East Theatre for a wide variety of shows with yet more programmed at the Network Theatre. Rubber is an hour-long immersive show promising to thrill as audiences ride out the action set in a car circumnavigating the streets of Waterloo.

BOX OFFICE/TICKETS 

Online via VAULTFestival.com

Phone via 07598 696 202

In person at The Vaults box office from 5:30pm during festival opening dates

Prices vary, ticketed events from £5

Tickets for Waterloo East shows are also available through waterlooeast.co.uk